Our Last Full Day on Whidbey Island

It's Saturday, October 1 and Fall is in the air. The morning temperatures are in the low 50º and we can tell the days are getting shorter. Ironically, there are still flowers blooming in the RV park. The Zinnias must be the hearty Pacific Northwest variety.

Our last day started with some lingering fog and overcast. Karen worked remotely during the morning while I worked on keeping up with the blog posting efforts. We took a walk around the RV park and stopped by the wayfarer posts to get some ideas for our version of the sign we wanted to create; stay tuned for the final product! The weather improved. The sun broke through the overcast and provided another beautiful day for us to enjoy in the Pacific Northwest.

Today we traveled to Fort Casey and the Admiralty Head Lighthouse. This is where the Coupeville to Port Townsend ferry departs. I wanted to get an idea of how we would approach the ferry terminal with the fifth wheel attached to the truck. So we packed a picnic lunch and headed south.

Admiralty Head Lighthouse stands just above Fort Casey, three miles south of Coupeville. The first lighthouse was built in 1861, then the current one was built in 1903. The lighthouse has not been in active use since 1922, but now features historic information for tourists as well as a gift shop. From the top you can enjoy spectacular views of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains, and the Port Townsend ferry crossing.

Fort Casey, Fort Worden and Fort Flagler together were known as the "Triangle of Fire," a trio of strategically placed fortifications defending the entrance to the Puget Sound at the turn of the 20th Century. Earlier in our trip we visited the other two forts, but honestly this facility was the best of the three.

Constructed in the late 1800s, Fort Casey was equipped for defense and used as a training facility up to the mid-1940s. The fort houses a pair of rare 10-inch disappearing guns. While the guns were the height of technology in the early 1900s, improvements in warships and the advent of airplanes soon rendered them obsolete. Two additional 3-inch mounted guns are also on display in their original emplacements.

After our adventure ended we stopped at the Walmart for paint and brushes for our sign project. We headed home to barbecue pork chops, take a nap, and eventually started painting our sign. The day ended with a spectacular sunset played to the naval station bugle retiring the colors.