Friday, August 9, 2013

Howdy! Long time no blog.


(Note:  Clicking, or double clicking on the photos makes them larger.)












We are on the downward side of the big loop and heading back toward Phoenix.  We should show up about the 16th or so, but right now we are in Castle Rock, Washington at a KOA cleverly positioned at the entrance to the road that goes right out to Mt. Saint Helen National Monument.  Clever these KOA folks!

We will leave the trailer here and drive out to the park tomorrow.  We’ve been told the visitor’s center and the road views are spectacular.  Besides I understand that there is a penny press at the visitor center.  One more for the grandkids collections!

As Cheryl has written in her blog today we just spent four days in Port Townsend, Washington.  We had passed through it a couple of years ago and I wasn’t impressed.  I thought it was a one, two-block long, street town.  Now having spent some time there I’m very impressed.  It a very nice little town of about 10,000 very nice folks with a whole bunch of beautifully preserved Victorian buildings.

We camped at Fort Worden State Park which used to be a huge Army base.  It was founded back in about 1902, named for the captain of the ironclad Monitor, and deactivated in 1953, I think.  It is beautifully preserved.  The movie “An Officer and a Gentleman” was filmed there so we bought the DVD and enjoyed watching and seeing all the areas we are now familiar with.

While Cheryl spent time with her daughter and granddaughter I took our grandson Rowan and his friend Jesse out to Whidbey Island to visit another fort, Fort Casey.  It’s gun emplacements are even bigger than Worden’s and the Washington State Parks Department actually found two of the 1800’s vintage 10’ “Disappearing Guns” in the Philippines and brought them back and mounted them in the fort.  So the guns you see in the photos are the real deal.

The next day we went down to Bremerton to see the Naval Undersea Museum.  It is huge and has all kinds of neat Navy displays all centered on the submarine branch of the Naval Service.  Question:  What do surface sailors call submariners?  Answer:  Bubble Heads.  Question:  What do submariners call surface sailors?  Answer:  Targets.

Vignette 1:   The photos I’ve posted that show the same people at both ends are not photo-shopped.  They are iPhone panorama photos and I have the people stand on the left side of the photo and then as I slowly pan right they run behind me and stand on the right side of the photo and appear twice.

Vignette 2:  Interesting town names:  We found our thrill on “Newberry Hill,” and in “Notus” we wrote several neat cheers for the high school football team.   “Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?  Notus!  Notus!  Notus! 

That’s all.  Ride Safe.
Frank
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