I hope you all enjoyed yesterday's post of Pt.1 of Wednesday's roadtrip. Here we go with Pt. 2.

After finishing walking along the Dungeness Spit, we headed over to Port Townsend. It is also a quiet little harbor town as evidenced by this picture,

Four deer just kind of moseying around the neighborhoods and eating up the grass in someone's parking strip. My immediate reaction was to whip out my 1911 and bag one, but I soon recovered myself and left them alone.

After having the obligatory lunch of 'Fish and Chips' (ale battered. Mmmm), we headed out to my favorite spot in Port Townsend, Fort Worden State Park. Here is a statement from one of the reader board displays inside the park.

"During the late 1800's, the United States began construction of one of the most extensive systems of coastal fortifications ever known. As a result, every important harbor was defended by powerful cannon mounted in heavy concete emplacements. Fort Worden remains as an important reminder of these defenses of the last century."

"Fort Worden was named after Admiral John L. Worden, commander of the Union vessel Monitor during its historic battle with the Confederate Merrimac in the Civil War. The post was the headquarters of the Harbor Defenses of Puget Sound. From here, Coast Artillery officers would direct the battle with any invading fleet. Thousands of troops trained here during both World Wars I and II, and Fort Worden was the only fortification in Puget Sound continuously manned between the wars."

Here is a map of the gun emplacements at the fort. If you click on the small pic, a bigger one comes up that I have enhanced, showing the size and number of cannon at each emplacement.

Here is a pic of the mounting spot for one of the 12 inch guns. The grassy area in the center is 15 feet across. You can see out into Strait of Juan de Fuca. Fort Casey is out of the shot to the right (east) and Fort Flagler is to the south.

And here is a pic of the mount for a 6 inch gun. Again Fort Casey is just out of shot to the right. I would have hated to have been an invading Japanese Naval Officer. Just east of Fort Casey is Whidby Naval Air Station. So even if they'd sent carrier aircraft they'd have been out numbered, out gunned and out classed.

Both of these shots were taken from the to emplacements in the upper right hand corner of the map shown earlier.

While we were getting back to the vehicle, we came across some shorebound whale watchers who pointed out a large pod of Killer Whales that were goofing off out in the Straight. Sorry, no shots of whales here.

It was starting to get dark and we headed home. We got to the Hood Canal Floating bridge where we found that a pack of State Patrol officers had made mincemeat out of the speeders. So I stopped to take a pic.

And here is another shot from the same location looking south.

All in all a very good two days stuffed into one. Maybe when the wife's work lets here have a couple days off in a row, we'll do this again. Thanks for looking.