Fort Worden State Park & Fort Townsend State Park , Washington

Across the Ferry and over to the Port Townsend area, a small very old town for Washington State - 1851. Fort Worden Historical State park circa 1898 - it is where they filmed the movie - An Officer and a Gentlemen. Just FYI.

We were happy to see a river otter -with her pups, scampering down the shore. Also, a large seal swimming along the beach. As curious about us as much as we were with them.

Facts: Constructed between 1898 and 1920, Fort Worden was one of the largest Endicott Period (1890-1910) forts to be built and a rare example. It was located within sight of a potential (if unlikely) enemy fortification, a British Royal Navy installation on Vancouver Island in Canada. The fort was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

Ferry

There is Mark taking in the beautiful Puget Sound {Salish Sea}.

Otters

This one of the rarest of all Northwest places – a lowland old-growth forest. It’s quite a park - just walking the road into this place is almost spiritual. Here, it’s on the dry side of the Olympics so these trees aren’t huge like rainforest giants, but there’s an open and ancient feel here that really gets your heart going. Giant glacial boulders dot the forest. Signs of old wildfires are evident. Pileated woodpeckers hammer away. Cougar warning signs abound. For about 8,000 years or since the last ice melted, this place has been left to itself. Even when there was a small military garrison here, the only trees cut were a few for firewood. So, while the thousands of miles of forests, our heritage, have been whacked away and the land thoughtlessly ruined, this place has what few lowland forests have these days – some very, very rare plants. All those weird and odd plants - saprotrophic fungi, plants that don’t produce their own food but instead borrow it from the trees. You won’t see them in cut-over forests – if the forest goes, so goes most of the other stuff like gnome plant, sugar stick and pine drops. This forest is truly and magically something of a sacred place, a place much like a world-class museum that holds our most meaningful treasures – our heritage. These great forests won’t return ever again - while humans are here. So along with the few other scattered lowland patches of old-growth -- this is it.

L. Eifert ~

His painting is below - click to enlarge.

Mark and I knew the moment we spontaneously decided to turn left into this State Park - we had been transported to another time.