It was the best of times, part two

We start this post with the most important highlight: Mallory and her girlfriend Cali made it to Seattle from San Clemente!  Wooo!  Despite the fact that they love The Office—and Dwight Schrute III was born in Seattle—nobody really wanted to stay in Seattle, so about as fast as we could we headed out for Bremerton.

One thing we’ve learned about Puget Sound is that those Washington State ferries are everywhere.  Damn near as annoying as sailboats.  And Walla Walla is the ferry that seems to take particular pleasure in getting in our way whenever possible.  Here she is after zooming past us in Elliott Bay.  As clearly shown in this photo, the ferries basically are big floating tubes that eat cars on one end and poop them out the other end.

We had high hopes for Bremerton.  Meh.  Maybe if the weather had been a bit better . . .  Or maybe not, bless its heart.

Fortunately, cloudy skies don’t prevent card games.  Cali showed the camera what appears to be a winning Monopoly Deal hand, but the rest of us failed to look at the photo in a timely manner and thus didn’t take advantage of her foolishness.

Bremerton turns out to be a Navy town.  Who knew?  Along the marina sits USS Turner Joy, a Forrest Sherman-class destroyer built in Puget Sound and now serving as a museum.  We didn’t have time to visit—which is disappointing—but hopefully next time.

Even farther down the Sinclair Inlet sits the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, which has been building and servicing warships since 1891.  As of 1891 most of our conflicts had involved European adversaries—which would suggest that the biggest need for naval vessels would be on the East Coast—but maybe the Pig War was still on the minds of the folks who plan these things.

One might think that the Sinclair Inlet is narrow and shallow such that Korean War era destroyers are about the largest ships that might jam into the shipyard.  Nope.  Just a few short days ago, for example, after ten years in Japan,  USS Ronald Reagan—a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier—cruised in for an oil change and other routine maintenance.  Very cool.  We would’ve approached for a better view, but, um, the patrol boat with the machine gun made that seem unwise.

What we really looked forward to seeing, though, was Poulsbo.  Coincidentally the Pleasant Harbor Yacht Club was sponsoring a cruise to Poulsbo, which also gave us a chance to meet some of our clubmates.  Wooo!  So we headed up to Liberty Bay.

Poulsbo is all about its Norwegian roots, which of course go all the way back to the 1880s after the native Suquamish people were shoved onto a reservation.  So basically a modern-day Viking plunder.  But any residual ugliness is long gone, replaced by flags and cute shops and all things Norway.  Heck, we even found lutefisk tacos on a menu.

Poulsbo turns out to be great.  We plan to return with our friends Tom and Deb, who are Danish and Finnish respectively.  Since Denmark and Finland basically are the same as Norway we figure they’ll love the lutefisk tacos.

Another fun coincidence is that we hit Poulsbo during the art festival.  Even better than the art were The Foundlings, a couple of Irish guys.  Fabulous.

Mallory and Doug waited an hour for the next band.  Um, less than fabulous.  Bring back The Foundlings, please.  But at least there were a lot of cute dogs running around.

Now about the yacht club.  We loved meeting other boaters from Pleasant Harbor.  Huge fun.  Great people.  We’re hoping a couple of the boats might even join us on next summer’s trip to Alaska.

Hours later, the evening ended very poorly for Slippery Pig patrons when Mallory and Cali took the stage.  Perhaps instead of a Mamma Mia song they should’ve chosen Jimmy Buffet’s more appropriate “Too Drunk to Karaoke.”

Speaking of horror, Saturday night a massive thunderstorm storm smashed into Puget Sound.  Which was great for dudes fighting those wildfires but sucky for Sammy, who needed shore leave in the dark of night.  And sucky for Dana, who earlier in the day bartered away her right to stay dry and make Doug take the lil guy out.  Here they are coming back in what looks like a rainy day but really was a rainy sky lit by lightning.

Don’t believe that photo was taken at night during a lightning flash?  Here’s the next photo in the series.

Upon return, Dana reported the carnage unfolding at the art festival, where several vendors had left their wares in pop-ups.  The next morning we could see the damage.

We thankfully survived the tempest, however, and made our way into town for a delicious breakfast.

With the storm cleared out, time to pop down the kayaks.  The kids returned with stories of harbor seals spotted from a distance along the way.  Silly girls.  They thought they’d seen something special.

After everyone but Doug and Sammy finally exhausted the supply of little shops to explore, we settled back into card games.  Somewhat shockingly the Slippery Pig allowed Mallory and Cali back, although we were sitting outside so they probably figured the other customers were safe.  Then we noticed storm clouds.  “Rain in 13 minutes” what?  The remaining vendors were scrambling around as we ran back to get the boat ready for another storm.

The wind whipped up two-footers and the rain pelted us, but just as quickly things calmed back down.  Whew.

Sadly, yesterday was return-to-home day for our baby and Cali.  Before shoving off, however, we took the kayaks for a spin ourselves.  Hey girls, this is what a special seal experience looks like.

Most Washington State ferries labor in obscurity, which probably is fine with them.  Not Elwha.  Elwha was infamous in Puget Sound.  In 1983, Captain Billy Fittro invited a comely passenger he fancied into the pilothouse.  His efforts to woo the lady literally took a turn for the worse when he decided to drive the ferry—loaded with a hundred passengers and dozens of cars—off course so she could see her home from the water.  The collision with what now is charted as “Elwha Rock” caused significant damage and led to Captain Billy becoming just plain Billy.  In 1990 Elwha lost her mooring lines in hurricane-force winds and nearly sank.  In 1999, a computer glitch led to steering failure, whereupon she smashed into the Orcas Island Ferry Dock, which in turn caused significant damage to both the ferry and the shore infrastructure.  Rumors of Elwha being cursed circulated through the ferry system for years.

A few days ago, we read a Seattle Times article about Elwha and a sister ferry being sold for scrap.  An interesting story to be sure, but the part about August 19 being the day the two ships left Seattle for good scarcely registered.  Until, that is, we reached Elliott Bay yesterday and saw a ferry being pushed by a tugboat.  Yup, Elwha.  How cool is that?

Now the bad part.  We really don’t get to see our kids enough, so it’s always traumatic to let them go again.  But at least we had a few awesome days before they left.

The next stretch will be rather uneventful boating unless something eventful happens along the way.  We’re heading back to Pleasant Harbor for a week before returning to Gig Harbor for Labor Day.  Then a week in Tacoma for some boat stuff.  Fortunately, football season is upon us.  Wooo!