Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Port Townsend, The UnderSeas Museum and Don's

We drove from Olymipia to the western side of the Olympic Pennisula in the Port Townsend area. We stayed at the Excapees Evergreen Coho park which worked great. This was centrally located so we could explore the entire area with the car.

Getting to Port Townsend was very interesting and we had to cross not only the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, but also the Hood Canal floating bridge, seen above. Both bridges have an interesting past -- the first Narrows bridge suffered a collapse in the 40's from wind -- a famous engineering failure. The Hood Bridge is one of the longest floating bridges in the world.


As we passed Bremerton, we saw these aircraft carriers in the mothball fleet. This is where ships go when they have served and are retired. This one is CV 6, the USS Independence.

Between Port Townsend and Bremerton, is Keyport and the home of the US Navy's Underseas Museum. This is really worth a stop! Above, Rick gets to stand next to the real sail of the Sturgeon, hull #637. Interestingly, the sail of these submarines is wet -- it fills with water and is not used underseas.

The museum has an amazing collection of submarine history, torpedo development, and deapsea diving. Rick is showing a special kind of mine that was used during Vietnam.

We then went to Port Townsend for a quick look. What an amazing town, right on the water front. We will be spending a couple days exploring this area.

Before we left, Rick noticed a drug store with a real, old time soda fountain. Well, we had to check this out! As you can see, they serve up an incredible hot fudge sundae and it was wonderful. We will likely come back here, too!


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