Category: Day Trip

Tea, anyone?

The Empress Hotel dominates the skyline for visitors who arrive in Victoria via the Coho Ferry. For many, afternoon tea at the Empress is on the must-do list. Although we march along the tourist circuit, we consider ourselves more neighbors than tourists and thus scale back our lists accordingly. But that doesn’t keep me from taking a look at what’s on offer.

Here’s a peek into the tea room. Weekday. Mid-December. Sliding toward the end of afternoon service. During the height of the tourist season this room would be packed with tea sippers.

Off season – now until December 31st – this will set you back $48.95 Canadian, per person. And I’m they do throw in a pot of tea. During the summer it runs $59.95 Canadian, though the offering might be different as well.

Victoria, here I come

After a tough October and an even tougher November, we were ready for a December getaway. And, for me, what better place to go than one of my favorite cities, Victoria, British Columbia? We’d heard rave reviews of the Christmas lights at Butchart Gardens, so we booked ourselves onto a package offered by the Black Ball Ferry in Port Angeles, heading out last Monday morning. A piece of cake. . .except for the blizzard warnings on our cell phones Sunday evening. . .and gale force winds in the Strait on Monday morning.

The blizzard didn’t materialize and the ferry rocked us to sleep. Because the weather in Victoria promised to be inhospitable, I left the good camera home and relied on quick shots from the pocket Casio. I’ll post a few snapshots in the days to come. Above is the Parliament Building, one of the prominent sights in the Victoria harbour area.

Adventuress

The historic gaff-rigged schooner Adventuress has been hauled out for refit in Port Townsend and we stopped by to take a look at her last week. Launched in 1913 in Maine, she has led a colorful life and is listed as a National Historic Landmark.

Adventuress was designed by B.B. Crowninshield for John Borden who sailed her to Alaska intending to catch a bowhead whale for the American Musuem of Natural History in New York. While the whaling adventure failed, naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews filmed fur seals on this journey, which led to early efforts to protect them.

Borden sold Adventuress to the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association and she served 35 years transporting pilots to and from cargo vessels on the California coast just outside San Francisco Bay. During World War II she became a U.S. Coast Guard Vessel guarding San Francisco Bay.

She eventually made her way up to Seattle and the Puget Sound area where she now is operated by Sound Experience as part of an environmental education experience on Puget Sound.

Adventuress is a beautiful boat and is getting repairs she obviously needs. Planking below her waterline is being replaced, along with other work that the 100 year-old lady has earned in her long and storied life. You can see both old and new (smooth) planking above the worker’s head in this shot.

Boat dreams

Last weekend was the 36th annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. Dear husband had a spare ticket yesterday and I got to tag along. . .and, frankly, drool.

Ordinarily there are a lot of lovely boats berthed at Port Hudson, the marina adjacent to the Port Townsend Maritime Center. It’s a fine spot to walk, look, and dream. The Wooden Boat Festival raises the stakes in a celebration of all things boat. Boats come from near and far. Yachts and fine sailing and rowing boats. Boats you’ve seen in magazines, whose lines you’ve memorized, whose names you probably know if your dreams run to salt water. They’re here and often granting permission to come aboard.

In addition to the see-and-be-seen festival boats, there are dozens of presentations on boatbuilding, boating adventures, tools, and techniques. I sat in on a great interactive session on small craft seamanship skills moderated by Howard Rice, a sailor who, among other things, soloed Cape Horn in a 15′ sailing canoe. Yes, the Cape Horn.

The harbor was packed with beautiful boats, most of which would be singularly fine in a photo, and the festival was crowded with happy boat lovers.

My husband has lived and worked aboard boats and ships of varying sizes, from an aircraft carrier down to more modest fishing boat sizes. He has longed to build a small boat for himself and at last now has shop space sufficent to do this. Yesterday he bought the plans. I’ll introduce you to the vessel later this week. Stay tuned!

Disappointed

I nearly missed an exhibition in Port Townsend of Ansel Adams photos taken at the World War II internment camp, Manzanar. But because it had been so enthusiastically received, the exhibit was extended until Labor Day and I headed to the Jefferson County Musuem to check it out.

After we paid our entrance fee I was firmly told that photos were not allowed, with or without flash. This was a disappointment – and even moreso when I saw the exhibit. The work was not a display of Ansel Adams prints but reproductions on large sheets of texts that told of the experiences of the Japanese Americans who were interned. The prints themselves are downloadable free from the Library of Congress website (www.loc.gov) as is Adams’ book, “Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California.” The exhibit itself was in the former Jefferson County Jail, a dreary cement basement in the building shown above. I’m puzzled by the photography ban.

The exhibit is a touching and disquieting portrait of American history and has local relevance because Manzanar was the first camp where local Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island were sent. Residents from Bainbridge Island were also the first West Coast Japanese Americans to be relocated. Orders were posted on March 24, 1942 and by March 30 internees were sent to the Center. Six days to dispose of virtually all ones possessions. Internees could take only what they could carry.

Manzanar is a vividly stark and remote place. I have driven past it many times. No buildings remain. Until more recent years, when an effort has been made to remember this era of our history, very little marks its significance. While there, the internees turned the desert into cultivated fields, created a small hospital, and educated their children. Many of the young men volunteered for military service and served the U.S. with great distinction. In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan issued a formal apology.

Some years ago in Death Valley, California, I was surprised to learn that there had been a World War II internment camp there as well. I took the photo above of a barracks there while on a ranger-led walk. Like Manzanar, it was a remote and unforgiving environment. Here too the internees made the best of the situation. In Death Valley they volunteered for work details that led to many of the improvements that exist in present day Death Valley National Park.