The Islands in Puget Sound

If their shorelines could all be measured, around every small rock at low tide, the islands in Puget Sound must have ocean frontage totaling thousands of miles. 

To see Port Townsend at sunrise would have been enough to justify the drive from Port Angeles, but I was here to catch a ferry bound for an island on a tantalizing invitation to meet someone I had never met.   

Bill Ferry invited me to board the ferry at Port Townsend near my vacation motel in Port Angeles for a half-hour sailing to Couperville on Whidbey Island, where he lives.  

That’s him in the doorway of a blockhouse, built to protect settlers from Indian attack.  He doesn’t live in a blockhouse but he looks like he could. 

Bill drove us up a very steep and narrow road to the top of a hill on Fidalgo Island.  Lands great and small, peopled and vacant, rose from the sea below us, each surrounded with ocean water,  becoming fainter as the most distant islands blended with the sea.  The view from there is in the top two pictures.  

One island in particular appeals to me as a place to live.  Isolated, all to myself, yet close enough to the social world, if desired.  

The steep and rugged coastline of Fidalgo Island near Deception Pass Bridge is like a pleasant memory.  My first job out of college was in Fort Bragg, California, near cliffs like these. 

I often find that comments on my pictures relate to the commenter’s own experiences, not to the subject at hand.  And now I’m doing it.   

We enjoyed an excellent lunch at the best fish place on Whidbey Island according to Bill.  Seabolt’s Smokehouse 31640 SR 20 #3.  Oak Harbor, WA 360 675 6485   

Calm water in the Sound today, clear air, good company, and the thrill of a good place I have never been before—it’s my kind of travel.  Thank you Bill.  

You can walk the trail that me led to this situation using a map prepared by Michael Angerman, showing all of my nightly sleeping places. Please click here:  Michael's Map   Thank you, Michael.