Next stop Olympic Peninsula - Bremerton

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With our mission accomplished the Seattle area, we basically have 4 weeks before we need to be in central Oregon for the upcoming solar eclipse. The general plan is to spend most of that time exploring Washington's Olympic peninsula in a counterclockwise direction and then head to Terrebonne Oregon. The drive around the perimeter of the peninsula is roughly 300 miles so the travel days will be generally short ones. We had originally expected to first head to Port Townsend and spend about a week there but geocaching impacted our thinking. 

We had heard of a cacher named "goblin dust" that has put out some very creative hides. In fact, we had met him at the Tri-Cities Mega event a few weeks ago and had done at least one of his caches as part of the Geotour around headquarters in Seattle. His caches are located more in the Bremerton area of Washington which is 50 miles before Port Townsend. That seemed like a long way to travel to do maybe a dozen or so of his more popular caches. There happens to be an Elks Lodge in Bremerton so we decide to split our time and stop 4 nights there.

The drive to Bremerton is about 75 miles with Tacoma being the major city we need to drive through. I manage to miss a split in the expressway where they place barricades between the left and right hand lanes several miles prior to the exit. I expected to have another opportunity to exit right but that wasn't the case. So I go sailing past our turn with no way of crossing over to where I wanted to be. This led us to do a bit more of a "tour" of Tacoma than we were planning, but we eventually got onto the road to Bremerton.

The lodge has a great view of the surrounding countryside while the RV camping spots are a bit secluded from the rest of the lodge. There are about two dozen spots with a surprising number of them occupied. We pick out a spot and get setup. Being a Sunday, the lodge is closed so we wait until the next morning to go in and register. The sites are water and 30 amp electric with no dump station but there actually is a restroom with a couple stalls but no showers. I suppose that is how some of the people that stay here for longer times manage to reduce the need to go to the dump a few miles away at the fairgrounds.

On our first night, Chris decided to bake cookies. Normally not a problem even with 30 amp, but shortly after starting all power cuts off. I discover that the breaker for our pedestal had tripped, but it is not located on the pedestal instead it's at some breaker box that I cannot find. Fortunately the camp host is around and he shows me the panel and we remedy the problem (for now). He explains that have been having issues with the electric at the campgrounds and he finally got approval to have it upgraded but not until mid August, which does us no good. We spend the rest of our stay nursing along our power usage and only trip the thing one more time.

We spent the first afternoon and the next day going out to explore the area and trying to find find and solve as many of the goblin dust caches we can. In the cache descriptions, he informs cachers of any special "tools" they might need like a straw or a nickel for instance. He has done a good job of working with local businesses to place the caches on their properties much like WV Tim has done in Martinsburg West Virginia. A couple of them were old pay phones he has converted so that when you pick up the receiver a voice explains what you need to do to access the log book. The one requiring a straw was quite interesting. There were two different locations and in each you inserted your straw and blew. One spoke to you with what to do next while the other had a scrolling LED display that spelled out instructions. This one was frustrating since you needed to blow for probably 20 seconds to get the complete message to display. If you stopped for even a second, the message would start all over. Frustrating but entertaining.

Another one was right next to the drive thru of a local coffee shop. There were four knobs with about 12 detents with each position labeled with two letters. After setting the four dials intending to spell a four letter word, you would push a center button and the thing would talk to you if it wasn't correct. I suppose we could have asked one of the employees for a hint but I'm not good at asking for help. We were pretty sure we knew the 4 letter word, but not the sequence of the dials to spell that word. After doing all the logical permutations with no luck, I started with other patterns. Once you have the correct solution, the trap door pops open and scares the living bejesus out of me.

One we could not get to work was an bicycle on a stand like you might have to do stationary bike riding. This one was behind an REI store. The concept was to pedal the bike which had a wheel driven generator so that you could power the electronics to display some sort of light pattern. We must have spent 30 minutes trying to get this thing to work. If the camera mounted on the back wall was actually functioning, I'm sure they got plenty of footage of two frustrated people trying their best but without luck. The owner later posted that this one wasn't working and needed to be "tuned up". Unfortunately it wasn't ready before we left town so maybe on a future visit?

We haven't done a proper hike in quite some time. So we took one day to try to remedy that. Green Mountain is to the west of Bremerton. Gold Creek trail starts at a good sized parking lot. There were a handful of vehicles here but it was a weekday. I suspect this place is crowded on weekends. You need to display your Washington Discover Pass to park here. As a side note, we saw one car as we finished the hike without the pass that had a ticket on its windshield.

The trail is about 5 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 1000 feet. At no point was the trail excessively steep and there was a reasonable amount of tree cover to be shaded along the way. We had passed one couple not too far from the summit. Since there is a geocache hidden up there, we hustled to find it and put it back before they got there. After taking some pictures and then eating our lunch, we still hadn't been joined by that couple. We finally started downhill and passed them almost immediately. I guess they had slowed to a crawl over the last 1/2 mile.

Recent Timber Harvest Opened Up the View

Nice View from Up Top

There are numerous side trails, some allowing bikes and some even permitting motorbikes. We didn't see any of the later and only one cyclist starting out as we had started. The slight detour we did took us to a big pond created by beavers. Their handiwork was quite evident but we did not see any while we were there. In all, we ended up with a 7 mile hike in the woods. It felt good to exercise different muscles since it has been a long time since we have been able to fit a hike like this into the mix.

Beaver Pond

Pretty Flowers Along Trail

Since Bremerton is actually a decent sized city with both Lowes and Home Depot, I decided to upgrade the ladder we carry with us. Our folding ladder worked well for what I originally got it for. Plus it had fit reasonably well in one of the basement storage bays. But it is kind of a pain in the butt to fold into the shape I typically need. When we were doing the Habitat for Humanity project, I got a chance to use a different style of folding ladder. Since I was using this one every day, I discovered it to be much easier to setup and put away. There are various sizes but I had figured either the 12 or 17 foot version would be adequate. After emptying the storage bay and taking a few measurements, I decided the 17 foot ladder would fit and would be safer when I use it to get onto the roof. It just happens that there is a Habitat for Humanity store just a few miles from the Elks Lodge, so we dropped off our old one. The guy was pleased we came all the way from Florida to donate our ladder! I tried the new one out several times as I continue to wax the rig and find it to be easier to use plus feels much more stable.

We spent our last full day exploring some sights in downtown Bremerton. There is a large shipyard - the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard - right along the water. Unfortunately there aren't any tours to do there but next door to it is the Puget Sound Navy Museum. This is a free facility that has a couple floors of displays with all sorts of info about the shipyard and the history of the area. It was a fun way to spend an hour or two.

Interesting Artwork in Downtown Bremerton

Navy Museum

This Submarine Surfaced in a Bad Spot!

A "Typewriter" for Dog Tags

We Weren't the Only Rutters There!

Diving Anyone?

Now This is a Slide Rule

Right next door is the Bremerton-Seattle ferry terminal which seems to be a pretty busy place during loading and unloading. Immediately behind the museum is Harborside Fountain Park with five water features and wading pools where there were dozens of kids playing. As we explored the park, we heard the sound of a massive water release. It turns out the fountains don't just have water flowing from the top, but periodically will erupt with a pretty large volume of water released. There must be some warning or pattern to the eruptions since the kids seemed to know when to head to the next one so they could experience it. Too bad we didn't have our bathing suits along.

Sculpted Stones

Fountains and Waders

We still had time on our parking spot to wander some of the downtown area. Bremerton is a very nice place. Clean and well kept with lots of things to see. We didn't have time to do all there was. An old destroyer - the Turner Joy - is docked here and is a museum today that you can tour. This might have been a fun visit. The marina has many boats of all kinds and sizes.

Marina in Bremerton

USS Turner Joy

Ester the Riveter in Homage to Bremerton's Shipbuilding Roots

We also went to the bug museum in town. It wasn't the highlight of our stay, but was an interesting diversion. It's a small place with both live bugs and many displays of dead ones. Some of them are impressively large and would want to run into them in real life. There was also a small room with reptiles. This wasn't nearly as impressive as the one we visited in Rodeo New Mexico, but there were some big snakes.

Giant Stick Insect

Impressive Ant Farm

We were glad we squeezed the stop to Bremerton into our travels around the Olympic Peninsula. Our four nights here was enough time to get many of the unique geocaches placed in the area as well as visit some of the other sights. Next stop Port Townsend.