Westport, Hood Canal, Manchester & Home

Our RV Park in Westport, Washington. Westport is on the south side of Grays Harbor on the Pacific Coast of Washington State. The weather during the first two weeks of our trip around the Olympic Mountains and Olympic National Park was mostly wet. From here on for the third week we experienced lots of blue skies and sun.

Westport Harbor is home to one of the largest fishing fleets (commercial and recreational) on the west coast of the USA. What's caught? Dungeness crab, halibut, Pacific whiting, tuna, salmon as well as lots of clams and oysters. Hmmmmm, so good.

Westport's south jetty which together with the north jetty forms a safe entrance into Grays Harbor. The little-bitty houses on the far side are at the tip of Ocean Shores where we spent a few days prior to driving south around the harbor to Westport.

Grays Harbor Lighthouse (in Westport) is the tallest lighthouse in Washington State. It was built in 1897 and stands 107 feet tall. The focal point of its Fresnel lens is 124 feet above sea level. It is in beautiful condition and is open to the public. We climbed 135 steps to the top to see the light and get a view out to sea over the trees that have grown up since the 1970s.

One side of the lighthouse's Fresnel lens custom built in Paris, France in the 1890s for this lighthouse. If I recall what the docent told us this light can be seen 22 miles at sea. It flashes white and red.

We drove south to Tokeland on the north end of Willapa Bay and found a small harbor and a small fishing fleet. And a lot more beautiful country. One small town (North Cove) that we passed enroute to Tokeland is slowly falling into the sea due to a shift in the sea current due to the 110 year old jetties at Westport. Their lighthouse fell into the sea in 1940, they've had to move their cemetery inland and the residential area shrinks smaller and smaller every year. Needless to say, their property values have fallen to zero. Living by the sea has its risks and rewards.

After departing Westport we decided to save the southwestern portion of Washington's Pacific coast for a future trip. We turned toward the northeast and began our trek toward home.

We stopped at Potlatch State Park on the Hood Canal for three nights. Our campsite is pictured above.

If you zoom in on this map and look at the bottom center where the canal takes a sharp turn to the east, you'll see Potlatch State Park. Hood Canal is a canal in name only...it is actually a fjord dug out during the last iceage by huge flows of ice...reportedly as much as three miles thick!

A view from the park up the canal.

During our second day at Potlatch we took a drive across the Kitsap Peninsula to visit the small town of Manchester where Tara spent the first ten years of her life.

If you zoom here and start with the first house to the right of the motorhome, then count right to the third house, here you have a small, gray house where Tara lived from something less than age 2 to age 7. She says the seawall wasn't there at the time and a very high tide would flood the basement:) But how's this for living right on the water (Puget Sound)...

Tara has always told me that she was brought up living on "view property". This is the view from the town dock just 100-150 yards from her old house. That's Mount Rainier out there.

And when you look a little left of the view above, there's Seattle across the Sound. And the mountains barely visible behind Seattle are the Cascades. We pulled the map out and carefully measured the distance across the Sound from Manchester to Seattle...that is eleven miles away...no wonder it looks so small:) If you look carefully, you'll see the Space Needle off the nose of the ferry.

When Tara and her brother were old enough where they needed separate bedrooms the family moved up the hill to this larger house. Tara tells me it didn't look this nice at the time...no deck, no bay window, etc. She lived here from age 7 to 10. Although not situated at the water's edge, the view from here is even better since it is at least 100 feet higher in elevation.

After sharing some nostalgia about living in Manchester, we drove about one mile away to Manchester State Park also right on the water's edge. The body of water here is Rich Passage and Bainbridge Island is just on the other side.

Little did we know ahead of time but here in the park we discovered a couple of buildings that looked old and similar in construction to what we had seen three weeks ago at Fort Worden at Port Townsend. This heavy concrete building was designed to withstand the effects of naval gunfire. Reading the sign we found this is called the mine casemate building. It was built in 1900 as part of the defenses against enemy naval attack on the Bremerton Naval Shipyard. This building was the operations center for exploding underwater mines against any enemy ship that tried to go through Rich Passage.

Directly across the street was this old brick building. It was used to store the mines used to block Rich Passage. There are still old narrow guage rail tracks in the floor. The park now calls this "The Bricks" and uses it as a picnic area out of the rain.

This sign tells the story of Middle Point Military Reservation (now the park) and how it was used between 1900 and 1910. The reflection makes this difficult to read but is useful if any of you are history buffs and I know there are a few of you out there:)

The sign above mentions that Battery Mitchell was built to house two 3 inch guns to protect the minefield. We took a five minute walk around a wooded hill from the Mine Casemate building and sure enough came upon Battery Mitchell.

On Thursday, May 17th we packed up at Potlatch State Park, drove northeast to Kingston, caught the ferry to Edmonds and pulled in our driveway about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Here's Mandy back on the dashboard as we wait to load onto the ferry...