Fort Worden State Park - Point Wilson — Sunday, Sep. 11, 2016

Olympic Peninsula > Northern Coast

Scott and I were in Port Townsend for four days last weekend, enjoying the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Show, and on Sunday, we went for a leg-stretcher before the long boat ride back to Seattle. We walked through town, up and over the hill on Monroe and around to a gated, pedestrian-accessible entrance to Fort Worden. We took a staircase down to the beach, and walked along the sand to Point Wilson, where we discovered the lighthouse is closed to the public. Darn. So we headed around the point on the beach, watching the tide rips and a little boat struggle to get through it, before turning up a little trail and finding ourselves up on top of the Fort. In the fort, we did our standard fort-visiting-procedure: yowling for echoes in the empty concrete structure, taking pictures, and nibbling on berries before heading back. Fun Fact: Fort Worden's structure is called Battery Kinzie -- the Fleet Foxes have a song by the same name. Give it a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i66xCyiYNU We thought we'd be able to get back to town via the beach, instead of our morning's road access, and the risk paid off! It's probably not doable at high tide, since there's about a 100 yard stretch right before the Port Townsend end of the beach that looks like it's underwater at high tide, but when we did it as the tide was coming in from low and we had plenty of beach to walk along. Along the way, we found a sweet little wood swing and had some fun on that, too!