Friday 09/08/2023
Had breakfast in the hotel breakfast buffet, ok. Drove the hour up to Port Townsend. When you are 500 miles away, Silverdale looks like it’s close to Port Townsend. Which it kind of is, as there aren’t any hotels nearer. But it was a surprise when the Maps app said 1:20 to destination. Anyway the drive was interesting as it had me crossing the Hood Canal Floating Bridge. I hadn’t done that since sometime in the early oughts.
Unfortunately at this time it was foggy and I couldn’t see much. The fog continued past noon.
The festival has a well-organized parking lot at the south end of town, with a shuttle bus to the north end where the festival actually is. I was in line to get my wrist band at 8:45. The festival occupies all of a large marina and boat yard. There are exhibits and presentation stage areas around the marina. Lots of craft demonstrations like this kayak.
In the boat parking lot — whatever you call the watery part with floating piers where the boats are — are about 100 wooden boats of all sizes and configurations.
I walked the whole perimeter and looked at all the vendors and exhibits. Then I walked all four floating piers and looked at every boat. That brought me to about noon. I plan to come back tomorrow, but for today I was done.
What to do next? I considered a drive down to the Old Ranch, but maps put that at 2 hours plus. Before I start on such a long drive, I needed to solve the problem of charging the phone in the car, i.e. getting a USB-C to lightning cable. Should be no problem. I took the bus back to the car, which gave me a nice tour of downtown P.T., and drove back to the shopping area. Checked both a big drug store and the Mercantile. Both had lots of cables but not the right one.
Checking the map for “iPhone”, there’s an iPhone/iPad repair store in Poulsbo. So I drove to Poulsbo, where I have been exactly one other time, in 2005 give or take 5 years. Poulsbo is a cute little tourist town with a really nice main drag, like one street of Carmel. Galleries, a really nice bookstore, lots of eateries. I was able to get my cable and had a smoothie at a nice coffee place.
Now it was two pm. And I could keep the phone charged and also play a podcast through the car speakers. But it was really too late to start the expedition to Graham. So I went back to the hotel. I read and napped for a while. At 6 I walked out to a local bar for a beer and a salad.
Codgerville 