RVing Beach Bums: 2015

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Whidbey Island, WA and Other Places Around There

This pic was from the RV park on the Naval Air Station, Whidbey.

This was our site for four days, July 2 6 and we were able to visit some interesting places while here. One of those places was San Juan Island, which I blogged earlier.

This one of those places. Coupeville. A small sea port steeped in nautical history.

From Wiki: Coupeville was founded in 1852 by Captain Thomas Coupe and is the second oldest town in the State of Washington. The town continues to preserve original pioneer homes with a variety of historic architectures including pioneer Block Houses, Saltbox, and Victorian Queen Anne style. Coupe's original home, built in 1853, is one of the State's oldest. Coupeville was officially incorporated on April 20, 1910.

Coupeville is a historic district is within the federal Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve. The reserve was established by Congress in 1978, as the first and now one of the largest National Historical Reserves in the nation. Its 22 square miles (57 km²) also encompass farmlands, Fort Ebey State Park, Fort Casey State Park, shorelines and beaches, parks, trails, and 91 buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places. Some of the above places will be included in this blog, which we visited as well while camped at Whidbey NAS.

A couple of sunsets from our gorgeous camp site...

The camp host was quite the horticulturist.

Those sunsets....:-)

Above the ferry from Whidbey to Port Townsend...

Check out the Sea Gull chicks. And below, arriving at Port Townsend thru the motorhome windshield.

We had other adventures while camped at Whidbey Island NAS. Here a few other pics from other places:

Ebey's Landing National Monument Homestead

Here is another place we visited on Whidbey Island: Fort Casey and the Admiralty Head Lighthouse.

These big guns are remnants of WWII era harbor defense. Three forts, this one and two on the other side of the straights provided a formidable, if not impenatrable defense.

The park volunteer presented a nice 45 minute tour of the Fort.

A distant view of the Kitsap and Olympic Mountains

The gun breech and the projectile loading elevator under the mount

Deception Pass was another place on the Island which had some beautiful views of the isthmus between the two islands.

Above, the bridge connecting the two islands

Well, that about wraps up the blog on Whidbey Island. We went to a few other places, but include them into a future blog. This blog was finished contemporaneously from Lincoln, NE on Oct 7, 2015.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

San Juan Island, WA

From Wiki:The San Juan Islands are an archipelago in the northwest corner of the contiguous United States between the US mainland and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The San Juan Islands are part of the U.S. state of Washington. In the archipelago, four islands are accessible by passenger ferry operated by the Washington State Ferries system.^[1]

Lopez Island, one of the San Juan Islands, Washington

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) defines the San Juan Islands as the archipelago north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, west of Rosario Strait, east of Haro Strait, and south of Boundary Pass.^[2] To the north lie the open waters of the Strait of Georgia. All these waters are within the Salish Sea. The USGS definition of the San Juan archipelago coincides with San Juan County. Islands not in San Juan County are not part of the San Juan Islands, according to the USGS.

Our ferry looked just like this one, and it was named Elwha. We saw on the news one night several weeks later that it was laid up in dry dock for emergency repairs for about four months. These ferries are huge.

It took about an hour to get to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island from the port of Anacortes on the northwest corner of Whidbey Island.

It was a little hazy from a wildfire in Olympia National Park. I was caught snapping off a few shots of the surrounding islands.

We decided to just take our time and drive around the entire island, and have lunch back in Friday Harbor later in the afternoon. This was a day trip (June 30, 2015) as we boarded the ferry about 6:30 and re-boarded for the trip back around 7:30.

Way up there was this huge house, but never saw a driveway up there. The morning aie was refreshingly cool and very little breeze.

We did hiking, but had to take it easy as Nancy's knee was not 100%.

The above trail was within the Lime Kiln Point State Park and it looped down to the water by an old lighthouse. The lighthouse was currently being used by a research team counting Orcas for the summer.

Above, sightings of whales for the month of June on the white board, including which pod (of two, one local and one migratory) and what direction they were headed, to the sound or to the ocean.

The research team posed for a photo op. We asked a few questions and they were more than willing to answer and offer explanations as to what their research involved.

The island was just so relaxing and awesome to view the beauty.

We happened upon this neat little piece of history, and quite frankly was something we'd never heard of before this day.

These a few pics of pics from inside the museum at English Camp. On the other side of the island, not too far from Friday Harbor, was where the American Camp was located.