The Marina At Port Townsend, Washington

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have 4,000+ postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

I’m currently in my 21st year of full-time RVing and my lifestyle is changing, For more info click Here

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The motorhome is parked at Thousand Trails Thunderbird RV Resort in Monroe, Washington. I’ve been here many times before. I’ll depart here September 20th.

 

I’ll be hanging out in this general area until about the beginning of October, taking maximum advantage of my Thousand Trails membership and very agreeable weather.

 

(Note: I’m currently a little discombobulated right now. My normal mode is to blog what I experienced yesterday. Right now, I’m a number of blogs behind my experiences. I expect to be back in my normal mode in about a month.)

 

 

Today’s subject…

 

About one month ago I visited the pretty and quaint  City of Port Townsend, Washington. I took a walk around the large marina to look at all the boats. Lots of bucks here!

 

 

Here are some of the photos that I took…

 

 

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To see the other 13 photos that I took, click this link…

(Note: Once there, you may click on any photo to make it larger)

https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273/album/AF1QipOJRnMHKMtbSKGz11jWq0Mv7tb1scnB6ke3nnAL

 

 

 

To read all about Port Townsend, click this link…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Townsend,_Washington

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed the photos!

Yesterday was cloudy with showers and 64 degrees. Forecast for today is cloudy with showers and 65 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 700 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273?source=pwa

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet 2016

AN ENTERTAINING DAY IN PORT TOWNSEND.

My cousin, Bob Moore lives in Port Townsend and he wanted us to meet him at the town fountain, and then have lunch. We knew that PT has a walking or driving map of the hillside homes, old victorians from the 1800’s, above the port, but the real action is “down town”. Nice old Victorians have been preserved on Water Street as well.

They reflect the former grandeur and economic importance of Port Townsend.

My favorite was this old brick clam cannery, 1885. I briefly met the owner, but his place wasn’t quite open yet.

But to really get a feel for the city, its friendliness, its artistic bent, its present character is to notice things like this little park made from junk.

Anything that floats in is welcome here. The bike “antenna” has Christmas lights on it. Jim spotted an old bread delivery truck turned into a residence right at the pier’s edge of the park, with a manikin head on top of it. He turned one just like it into a camper in his younger days. After we met Bob,he told us that some folks in town want to clean it up and get rid of it. But, people like the funky place. We ran into Bob before our appointed time for lunch.

 

When you live near water, there is much ado about boats and water sports and water traffic. Jim liked the new pier and took a lot of boat pictures.

And I liked the old pier and took a lot of boat pictures.

The ferry chugs regularly between PT across Puget Sound, part of the Straits of Juan De Fuca to several different islands in this island mottled area. You really need a map to appreciate the jagged coast line of hundreds of islands both big and small.

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I stepped into this small boat builders place.

I passed by a bed and breakfast where this woman entertains passers-by every day in good weather. I also saw a thin woman in her 90’s in levi shorts, exercising her dog. She didn’t want her picture taken. Realize that I’m dressed in four layers and it is about 10:00 a.m. and she is in shorts.

I made it to the marina on the Point Hudson end of town. PT’s other marina is on the opposite end of town.

This one is the prettiest.

No craft too small.

Before we met Bob at the Fountain, we saw him on the street after getting his hair cut. He said, I made a trip to our book store, you must read this book and he handed me a copy of “Boys In The Boat” by Daniel James Brown. We didn’t know that this weekend, after we leave, Port Townsend is hosting  a big boat festival with tall ships, wooden boats and the author of the book will be in town to sign autographs. Bob was talking excitedly, in glowing terms, about this book when he came to visit us at Dave’s and Melissa’s camp. Then he led us into a thrift shop that had a poster of the town fountain and asked me to take a picture that imitated the poster. Here it is.

 

I was more interested in this tiny little electric car parked in front of the restaurant.

What a great little town car. Its a Gem, see the plug? We couldn’t decide if the projector is a camera or a hood ornament?

Bob is a tourist in his own town because he’s just moved here and is spending his first summer in PT while his significant other lives in their house in Nevada City, CA. with two years to go before she retires. We just happened to run into Mari, a 70 year old woman who unlocked this warehouse of long boats. We got a great education about them. A famous boatmaker, named Pocock built rowing shells of red cedar, one of which won the 1936 Olympics with a team from local communities like Sequim. A replica of that boat is in this warehouse, and, the “Boys In The Boat” is the story of one member of that Olympic Team. I can’t wait to read it just from the cover introduction. The replica is the same boat, just three years younger.

Some of these racing shells are 60-65 feet long. Others measure anywhere from single seat rowers to nine seat shells, eight rowers and the coxswain. She told us that in competitions you can’t fly a boat to the East Coast, so they have a boat permanently there. She rows with the women’s team, “Tough As Nails.”  She invited Bob to learn to row with the men’s team. Mari has been rowing for ten years and had never done it before.

She said they don’t race the heavier wooden boats anymore, but they are so comfortable and stable, these boats go out every day. She practices every morning at, depending on sunrise, 6:00 or 6:30. They go at it most of the winter. When they are shut out by bad weather, they have practice rowing machines. Pretty amazing. Talk about dedication. The new fiber glass boats are faster and long boats are required to break into three pieces so they can be trucked around to various places for competition. For competition they all must weigh the same. Like horseracing, the “girls in the boat” who weigh less have an advantage. There are over 30 boats in this warehouse.

Chugach baidarkas are also built here. This one is 17 feet long and sells for $1800. They are made with a solid frame and varnished fabric. Light weight skimming with one to three people is their advantage. This whole pier area was fascinating and I’ll have to finish tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OLGA AND MT. CONSTITUTION

Somehow we had the idea that Olga and Rosario were the other two main communities on the Island. And, in fact, we don’t know what the people count is near Olga and Rosario. In reality, they are very small. We dead ended here, looking for an old strawberry cannery turned into a gallery. The store was closed.

The small dock…

…and private beach picturesque.

I peeked through the window of the unmanned Post Office and saw approximately 60 boxes.Then as we drove away, the only other major building we had passed turned out to be the cannery, art gallery and Olga Cafe.  We stopped and found some interesting artwork, that even Jim enjoyed.

They had quite a collection of home made rugs and woolen woven goods of good quality.  In a motor home buying anything bulky is out of the question. I enjoyed some small things, cat etchings and clever multi-media stuff.

Beautifully handcrafted leather photo albums.

Then we drove away without taking a picture of the building.  But, on to Mt. Constitution, the highest point on the Island.

More misty distances. The air is exhilarating and the pictures don’t do the feeling of being on top of the earth justice.

I tried another panorama shot with my new camera , but somehow, it doesn’t seem as interesting as the one I took at Rosario Marina.

I enjoyed the photo of the giant pickets in this old board fence that lines the climb up to the viewing platform at the top of Mt. Constitution.  I took the picture on the way down.  Before we set out for our day on the island, Jim discovered two large oil spots beneath the Bronco.  The mechanic at Jiffy Lube failed to tighten the oil pan nut.  Jim tightened the nut. As a precaution, Jim crawled under to check it again before we headed down the mountain and found the transmission fluid was now leaking. Ever prepared, he had a bottle of transmission stop leak in the Bronco. That got us home and the leak is temporarily gone. A  major seal job is set for next week.

I liked this poem dedicated to Rosario’s  one-hundred year celebration  and forgot to include it in yesterday’s blog:

God molded an Island and shaped it fair,

He planted the pines and the maiden hair,

He drew about it the shining sea,

And said, “Work makes beauty eternally.”

On the Island one dreamed of a castle rare,

Wide in portal and broad of stair,

So, he wrought and carved by the shining sea,

Until his dream became beauty eternally.

Then, a woman crossed the threshold there,

The castle was home through her loving care

God wrought a man and woman-and lo!

Together they builded Rosario.

Author is G.H.E.