We drove into Port Townsend, population 10,000, the county seat and only incorporated city in Jefferson County, Washington, the next morning after a quick road trip breakfast at McDonald's.
Port Townsend is nicknamed the "City of Dreams" because there was a time back around its founding in the 1850s when it had hoped to become the biggest and most important harbor city on the west coast. That clearly didn't pan out.
Today it's a sleepy little seaside village popular as a tourist destination.
Port Townsend is home to a paper mill which makes it smell unfortunately of sulfur, something that you notice immediately when driving into town! Luckily, the smell is limited to an area around the mill, and the rest of Port Townsend is really lovely.
We had driven into Port Townsend from Port Angeles because my dad had got us all tickets for a whale watching cruise.
I'm not sure when I'll be back in Washington or if I'll bother to travel with my ceramic mug, but I made sure to get my money's worth on the trip by getting several refills of tea, and it's fun to have a mug as a souvenir of our cruise.
We boarded the Chilkat Express catamaran and met the crew, which included the captain and two guides who would help us spot and learn about the wildlife that we were expected to encounter.
Of course, the company cannot actually guarantee what you're going to see on any given day, so every trip is a surprise.
We settled into our seats and cruised out into Puget Sound.
I had to look up what a "sound" was. I've heard about Puget Sound so many times but had never really questioned what the term meant. Turns out, a sound is a body of water that connects two larger bodies of water, often forming a narrow sea channel or ocean inlet between land masses
It was the 40th anniversary of the Puget Sound Express, and they were selling special mugs to celebrate. If you bought one of their mugs, you could get unlimited free hot drinks (coffee, tea, hot chocolate, or cider) for life!
After about half an hour of sailing through the sound, we arrived at Deception Pass State Park, a breathtaking strait that separates Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island in Washington State. Known for its swirling currents and dramatic cliffs, the pass connects Skagit Bay to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, offering stunning views of rugged coastlines and dense forests.
The pass was given its name by explorer Captain George Vancouver in 1792, as a joke after his crew first mistakenly identified Whidbey Island was a peninsula.
We had seen a few unique seabirds on the trip over, but here is where we spotted our first marine mammals. A large family of harbor seals basked lazily on the rocks along the shore.
Nearly hunted to extinction by the 1960s (the fishing lobby had fought hard to kill off all of their competition), harbor seals have made a remarkable comeback in the past several decades thanks in large part to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 which helped their numbers rebound in the Pacific Northwest.
We left Deception Pass, and then... we saw them!
A small pod of three orcas were breaching just off of the coast, and we cruised over to watch them as they surfaced, dove, and occasionally shot jets of water into the air.
There had been no guarantee what we might see on our cruise, of course, but if I had to choose just one marine creature to spot, an orca would have been my ultimate wish.
Seeing them in the wild was incredible.
Orcas, or "killer whales", are technically not whales at all, but are in fact dolphins. They are the largest member of the dolphin family, and are known for their intelligence, social behavior, and advanced echolocation ability.
Heading back to port, we encountered a group of sea lions hanging out on a buoy. They were honking and yelling at one another, and it was really hilarious to watch them try to push each other off of the buoy with their big lumbering bodies trying to jockey for a spot in the sun.
As we pulled into port, Pinky spotted a pair of sea otters basking in the sun on the sand near the docks.
I didn't get a very good picture, but it was really fun to see them in real life. I had been wanting to spot one since coming to Washington.
In my opinion, this cruise was the highlight of our trip to Washington!
We had dinner at a small restaurant called 929 Woodfire Grill just a few blocks from our rented house in Port Angeles. We had eaten there the night before as well, and the food was so good that we went back again!
I've really been enjoying how much seafood I've gotten to eat during my visit to Washington State.
No comments:
Post a Comment