Port Townsend was everything we'd ever been led to believe it was, and then some. Charming, quaint, scenic, historic (the history of Port Townsend is fascinating), you pick the adjective. Add to these crowded, touristy, pretentious, expensive, and you begin to get a feel for the place. The whole thing is cute as a button (damn, did I really just use the phrase "cute as a button?"), and they know it. It's sickening. Shauna loved it!.

We pulled into town right about dinner time, and I was surprised at how congested downtown was for "the off-season". We wandered around for a while, touring some of the cooler Victorian aged homes and buildings, looking for someplace to eat. We decided on a bar and grill called "Finns", but, decided against it after being informed of the 2 hour wait to be seated. Instead, we walked across the street to "The Public House", another bar and grill, with the rest of the plebians. The food was alright, if not more expensive than I would have expected from a dining establishment making overtures to the common folk. After dinner, we found a cheap room at the Aladdin Inn, right on the water.

The next morning we found a laundromat, and threw Shauna's wet things into a dryer. A friendly attendant mentioned a place called Ft. Worden State Park, where she alleged there was a really well preserved WWII vintage bunker that they still let you wander through. Naturally, instead of reading women's magazines next to a row of noisy dryers for an hour, I suggested we check it out.

The attendant's description turned out to be vastly understated. What we found was an elaborate system of bunkers, tunnels, war rooms, barracks, big gun emplacements, etc., overlooking the Puget Sound. Here's just a few of the photos we took there.













The place was a labrynth, and we spent better than an hour getting ourselves lost. We could have stayed there all day. But, alas, we had a schedule. We'd have to adhere to it if we hoped to get around the peninsula and down the coast in the days remaing.


On the way out of the park we saw this lighthouse, and Mt. Baker some 70-80 miles in the distance. Upon our return, the attendant told us how rarely Mt. Baker is visible from Port Townsend, and how lucky we were to get pictures of it.

We had been more than fortunate with the weather thus far. It had been sunny and reasonably warm every day. I wondered how long our luck, and the weather, would hold. We'd find out in the days to come.