On The Road – PaulB – A visit to the Olympic Peninsula, 1 of 10

We get to go on vacation with PaulB, spending the week in the Olympic Peninsula!   It’s a 10-part series, so we’ll see the second set in a couple of weeks.  All of the original submissions were lost in the fire, so extra thanks to PaulB for submitting all 10 posts a second time!

PaulB

I took my first vacation in 2½ years in early May. Since Covid is still with us in the Pacific Northwest, I decided to take three precautions, in addition to wearing a mask. The first is that I’d take the vacation before the summer vacation season really got going; the second is that I’d make this an outdoor vacation, spending most of my time in Olympic National Park; and the third is that I’d arrange to have some minimal kitchen facilities at every stop, allowing me to decide whether to eat in or eat out.

As it happens, I ate out only once (via fast food drive-thru) in the entire 10-day trip. I had planned to patronize more of the local eateries during this trip but few of them offered outdoor seating and, in these predominantly red counties, few of the residents and tourists were taking the virus seriously.

The pictures I’m posting were all taken with a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 phone.

The first stop on the trip was Port Townsend, Washington, a tourist town that’s very proud of its late 1800s heritage. Adjacent to the town is Fort Worden State Park, a former military base that was obsolete almost as soon as it was built. Some of the scenes from “An Officer and a Gentleman” were filmed there.