Fri 09 – Sun 11 Aug 2019
On Friday, Dave and I got up between 6 and 6:30 a.m., but left the girls sleeping in the tent on our pitch at Bainbridge Island near Seattle. Dave noticed that a car parking space had become available in the group of 6 spaces near our tent, so he brought the car up, then went for a short walk along the beach, where he saw two herons and a river otter unhurriedly foraging along the shore.
I went to get a shower. There was one female and one male shower serving the entire campsite of 40 pitches. I went into the ladies’ block, climbed into the shower and got all ready to go ... then found that the coin slot was blocked with someone else’s money. I got dressed again and, as it was still early, went round to the men’s block, hoping I could sneak in past the urinals and use their shower. As I approached, a man was just going into the block, so I explained the situation and waited outside. When he came back out a couple of minutes later, he said that there was just one man left in there and then the coast was clear.
I patiently waited outside. I could hear the man inside washing his hands, then he started the hand-drier, so I knew it wouldn’t be too much longer. A minute or so later, the hand-drier finished. He restarted it. Just my luck: one of those people who wants perfectly dry hands. Oh, well, I’d just have to wait through another hand-drying cycle. I was a bit on edge as I knew I needed to get inside soon before anyone else came along to use the urinals. The second hand-drying cycle finished. The man started it again. When that finished and he restarted it for a fourth time, it had gone beyond a joke. I gave up and marched inside, eyes straight ahead, and made a beeline for the shower.
The unit price for both men’s and ladies’ showers was 25 cents for 1½ minutes, which was exactly what it said on the sign in the men’s cubicle. Interestingly, the sign in the ladies’ had said 50 cents for 3 minutes – do they think women can’t calculate in 1½ minute intervals or is it assumed that they will need much longer showers than a man, i.e., multiples of 3 minutes?
The girls got up about 8:45 a.m. and we were reminded exactly why Poppy insists on having a pillow when camping: it’s so that she can punch it out of the end of her sleeping bag into a corner of the tent for the night. May went to the car to get cereal bowls for them both for breakfast. We became aware that she'd been gone for a long time ... then guiltily remembered that we’d forgotten to tell her we’d moved the car up to near the tent. At that moment, she reappeared, empty-handed and visibly upset that her good intentions had ended up as no more than a long, pointless yomp down and back up the steep hill, trying to find a white car that looked just like every other white car in the car park, but wasn’t actually there.
We breakfasted at the picnic table on our tent pitch, watching a pretty blue jay hopping about in the surrounding bushes and a child on a hoverboard.
Dave had never seen a hoverboard before and vaguely said to Poppy, “You’d be interested in one of those, wouldn’t you?”
Equally vaguely, Poppy replied, “Hmm, I suppose, maybe.”
Dave murmured, “Perhaps you could buy one with your next lot of Christmas money ... just a budget one. Or maybe save up for a higher spec version if you really wanted to.”
“Yeah, maybe...” responded Poppy, “But, actually, I’ll probably get a mid-range one costing between £150 and £170, in purple and black, but not a top range one because I don’t need the flashing lights, nice colours or a long-lasting battery.”
Mid-morning, Kurt arrived at our pitch. Amy (his wife) was working and their two girls were on a sailing camp, but Kurt had offered to spend the day with us and show us around. He drove us out for a walk in nearby Grand Forest on Bainbridge Island. It was a pretty area and, on the walk, the girls and I found a little painted rock hidden in a tree – it had been painted by a talented local artist and had a Facebook address on the back to post a photo to (which I did a day or two later, when I had some wifi) – and we took the little guy with us to hide somewhere else.
We then drove to the Japanese memorial at Pritchard Park, near the community of Creosote (a historic creasote manufacturing and application site that is currently undergoing a four-year clean-up). The Japanese memorial was a touching place: it was the site where 276 islanders of Japanese descent (mainly US citizens) were forcibly removed from their homes, jobs, farms, businesses and community on 30th March 1942, to be imprisoned or, for some, drafted into the military. This was a knee-jerk reaction to the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and the USA’s entry into World War II. Given just 6 days notice, these people could only take what they were able to wear or carry, as they were unconstitutionally incarcerated. Equally touching was the warmness of the community’s welcome three years later to those who were able to return to the island at the end of the war.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] At the Japanese memorial.
After a short playground visit, we headed back to the campsite with Kurt, to be joined by Amy and their children, tired out from their sailing camp. We chatted for 30 minutes, and made plans for tomorrow, then Kurt and his family set off for home.
Whilst we were out, 40 cyclists had turned up to camp next to us for the night. They were on the final night of ‘4k For Cancer’ – a 4000 mile cycle ride across 70 days, fundraising for young people aged 18-25 affected by cancer. Day 3 was, by all accounts, the most memorable: with everyone feeling the effects of two full days of cycling whilst still not particularly fit, it was then straight into 89 miles of cycling with 7000 feet of climbing! There was great camaraderie amongst the cyclists and we were even more impressed when a couple of them individually took it upon themselves to pop over and apologise in advance that it could be a noisy night, it being their last night after sticking together through thick and thin for over two months.
We cooked tea and headed to bed early, to get some sleep before the alcohol flowed amongst the cyclists. But we were so tired that they barely kept us awake even once the celebrations started. Next morning, we awoke to heavy rain, but couldn’t get into the rain shelter for breakfast for 2½ hours, until the cyclists got underway for their final stint into Seattle. There was a bit of leftover coffee so the lady who takes on the annual role of feeding the final breakfast to the cyclists at Bainbridge gave it to us, and we shared it with a USA-Norwegian couple who’d also had to wait around for breakfast.
We drove out to Kurt’s house a few miles away and, being still raining, stayed and chatted for the morning and had a bite to eat for lunch, and the girls went outside to say hello to the family rabbits and chickens, before we all drove to the ferry and headed into central Seattle as foot passengers for a Saturday afternoon in the metropolis.
Hit play to listen. (Never mind the bedpost – what about on the wall?)
More-or-less the first place we headed in Seattle was the Gum Wall near Pike Place Market. This slightly nauseating icon was something I’d never heard of – an alley 15 feet (4.5 m) wide with chewing gum stuck to both walls, filling every single space to a height of 8 feet (2.5 m) for a length of 50 feet (15 m) along both walls. Like everyone else, the four girls chewed some gum and then carefully chose their spot to add it.
This gum wall got started in the early 1990s as a way for people to get rid of their gum whilst waiting in line for the adjacent theatre. After more than 20 years, the gum layer had grown to several inches thick, weighed over a ton and was putting undue strain on the wall. Therefore, in 2015, it was steam-cleaned and scraped off by a team working for 130 hours. You would never guess, looking at it today – it is, once again, solidly covered in gum of every colour, forming a real work of art.
We also wandered along to the Pike Place Fish Market to see the staff throwing huge, slippery, headless fish to each other along the full length of the counter – or over the counter, just missing customers’ heads – and giving customers an unexpected scare with a pulley-controlled monkfish draped over the front of the counter.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Pike Place Fish Market and pulley-controlled monkfish ... and a more sedate flower stall a little further along the market.
We passed Beecher’s Handmade Cheese and, a door or two away, the original Starbucks with a huge tourist queue outside. As we wandered back towards the ferry, via a short spin on a carousel for the girls, May suddenly let out a huge, excited shriek – there, parked at the side of the road, was a car with Florida registration plates. You may wonder why this elicited such joy: Kurt’s family certainly did.
The reason was that, just two days ago, Dave had announced three new competitions he was running for the USA part of our trip, all designed to have only a 50% chance of success across the entire 3 weeks. Competition number 1 was to spot, in the far north-west of the country, a car from Florida (the far south-east). The competition had been cracked in less than 48 hours, and Dave already owed the girls a chocolate bar prize.
We headed back to the campsite by ferry and car, Kurt’s family collected their tent and got set up on their pitch on the lower level near the beach, the kids (and adults) listened to a camp talk where we met Orion, the Great Horned Owl, then we had a campfire and natter at Kurt’s pitch, before the four girls scarpered off to someone else’s campfire – where they charmed another set of parents by making friends with their two little girls aged 3 and 5, and hatched a plot for the four of them to share a tent for the night next to Kurt and Amy’s camper van, leaving Dave and me to luxuriate in a tent that we had all to ourselves ... no kids, no group of cyclists ... such space and peacefulness ... bliss ...
Next day, both families decamped, dropped stuff at Kurt’s house and drove north to go berry picking. I thought it would be a stint of natural foraging just up the road, but it was about 50 miles to a U-Pick towards Port Angeles. This meant the berries were huge, juicy and plentiful, and we filled many buckets with succulent blueberries, raspberries and loganberries. As we slipped the pots of berries into the back of the car, we saw the little painted rock peeping out at us, and started wondering where we might hide him next for others to find.
Back at Kurt’s house, they cooked us up delicious homemade tacos for tea, and had invited us to stay for the night, so we had the real treat of showers and proper beds.
We would be moving on tomorrow and who knew what adventures that would bring...
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