We expected rain so it was great to wake up to a beautiful morning. No rain and not too cold.
Bill had coffee going when I finally came out of our warm nest. That’s typical. I wake up while he’s doing teardrop yoga (putting on his pants) then I either drift back to sleep or stay awake listening to coffee being prepped.
I poured us each a cup and sat by the fire while Bill made potatoes, bacon and eggs. Such a cushy life.
Presidential tantrums
We read about our ridiculous president’s tantrum against Portland and tried to have faith that most people everywhere are kind. (Portland’s a beautiful place to live and visit. If you haven’t experienced it, do go.)
Never thought I’d see the US heading toward a totalitarian state. How can a group of people promote less government oversight of business while at the same time promote government all up in our bedrooms and bathrooms and censoring what we can say? Bully-based power should have been quashed in grade school. I hope we grow up soon.
…back to our head-in-the-sand camping trip.
Dishes and showers
I did breakfast dishes in our super efficient, lightweight, super cheap, small plastic tubs while Bill showered. Our dish tubs are labeled Wash and Rinse (in Sharpie) so the rinse water’s never greasy.
Deception Pass State Park has showers! Yup just push a button, no quarters or tokens required. Cushy life indeed.
Penn Cove
We drove through Oak Harbor and around by Penn Cove, famous for tasty mussels and a horrendous Orca capture in 1970. Orcas stayed away from Penn Cove until last year (54 years later). It’s not enough that we’re horrible to each other, we’re horrible to other species also. Orca are such a treat to see cruising in their element. They travel hundreds of miles a day…not a creature to be kept in any man-made tank.
Fort Casey
Speaking of people being horrible to one another, we visited (and enjoyed) Fort Casey Historical State Park. You can see several batteries (big guns and their supporting infrastructure) from the parking lot. They sit in a serene looking bowl facing out toward the entrance to Puget Sound. The guns and infrastructure are hidden from the water side as are those at Fort Worden and Fort Flagler. These three forts were designed to protect the entrance to Puget Sound. They never fired at an enemy, largely because airplanes made hiding from ships obsolete.
The facilities preserved at Fort Casey are pretty interesting. There’s this weird juxtaposition of tools of war (despite the obsolescence) and the absolutely gorgeous setting. Visually the natural contours blend with the man-made contours and the starkness of the gun emplacements has it’s own kind of beauty — especially in this setting.
Several of the guns are still in place. One in the lower position and one raised. They are (were?) disappearing guns. They hunkered on their haunches until hydraulics raised them up enough to fire. The recoil pushed them back down into place again. All this happened really quickly and must have been dangerous just to be around. It’s very quiet now though.
It’s interesting and, I think, great that there are no railings along the top of the emplacements and you can climb ladders up/down in several spots. The top is just a smooth concrete surface curving down a bit toward the water before going under the grass. The drop from the inside edge to the next (concrete) level down where the guns are is quite a distance and you can walk right up to it. You can also look down the gun barrels and almost everyone I saw, did. Quite a bit of the concrete structure underneath the guns is open so you can walk around a warren of concrete rooms. Again, oddly beautiful in a kind of awful way.
We walked to the water-edge of the grass slope and watched two groups of 4-6 sea lions each doing something very actively at the edge of a rip. They were separate from each other, but not too far apart (maybe a football field or three?). My guess is that they were cooperatively fishing, but I don’t know. We watched them for quite awhile.
Admiralty Head Lighthouse
We ate our banana and snack bar lunch at a picnic table near the lighthouse. It’s just north of the multiple battery facility and just behind another smaller battery…or maybe it wast some other kind of defensive war structure. I guess you could look at both as protective, though one protects without blowing stuff and people to smithereens.
