Visiting Port Townsend, WA

We left the island, crossing to the Olympic peninsula via ferry.  However, research did not reveal the extent of historical interest of Ft. Casey near the ferry terminal.  
See http://parks.state.wa.us/505/Fort-Casey

We did see some of the buildings as we passed by onto the ferry landing.  

Two thoughts: First, sorry we missed some of the things discussed in link above. Second, the dreary architecture so typical of military installations, like Al's bootcamp experience.

Next we waited for our ferry.  Now there is a science to this using a ferry.  You cannot come earlier than 45 minutes before sailing and if you come later than 30 minutes before sailing, you move to stand-by, even if you have a reservation.

We had read the book and we are in the white car in row 2.

Here comes our ferry.

When all the east-bound travelers exit the ferry, we can get on.

A view of a later ferry arrival in Port Townsend and mountains in the background.

We wanted to see the downtown of Port Townsend based on some buildings seen from the ferry as we approached.  Here is a view of many impressive buildings there.

The folks that paid for buildings in that era loved to put their name and the date of construction on most buildings.

Al did some research on these buildings and how they came to be in a town with such small population.  Today about 9000 but far less in the years after construction.  
This is an example of the motto, "If you build it, they will come."  They did in the hope that Port Townsend, based on its harbor location, would be the largest port on the West Coast.  One little problem was that the expected railroad did not come due to an economic panic in the early 1890's.  So the buildings were left relatively undisturbed and now serve as locations for artisans and merchants serving the tourist trade. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Townsend,_Washington

This view reminds us of Hendersonville, NC, where Sue's brother Mark and family live.

As we are driven around Seattle by Chris and Anna, buildings similar to these are squeezed in between much larger more modern buildings so at this time in history, Seattle looked much like this.