Part I – in which your faithful scribe travels north through the fearsome Tacoma Narrows and down the Thea Foss waterway to Tacoma. It’s popular among Seattlites of a certain age to poke fun at Tacoma. I don’t get it. What I see is a city that is trying to improve itself – and making …
Sometimes a theme for a post fails to suggest itself. This is one of those times. I just want to share a few photos from various places we briefly visited. Here are two from Jarrell Cove Marina. The shop is noted for selling Hawaiian shave ice, better known hereabouts as snow cones. These are, presumably, …
We reached our journey’s turn-around point at Allyn, a tiny village at the end of a finger of Puget Sound. There are three things to know about Allyn. First, Friday night is Prime Rib night at the very good Boat House restaurant. We were there on Friday, so yea for us! Second, Allyn is the …
How can the rest of the world expect America to lead on global threats — climate change, the extinction crisis, pandemics — when the country no longer has a sense of benign purpose, or collective well-being, even within its own national community? Flag-wrapped patriotism is no substitute for compassion; anger and hostility no match for …
Another short cruise – maybe forty minutes – brought us to the shores of tiny Hope Island. We snagged the only available buoy and set out to circumnavigate our home for the night. This did not take long. Landing on the southern shore, we walked every trail, explored every nook and still covered less than …
We left Swantown marina this morning and half an hour later tied up at Boston Harbor at the mouth of Budd Inlet. The docks are not great, but the people are. The neighborhood feels like something from fifty years ago – simple beach houses with interesting nautical yard art and nary a McMansion in sight. …
Bound for Olympia, the southernmost port of call on our voyage, we stopped overnight at Oro Bay on the south side of Anderson Island. It’s a really lovely place, but apparently cursed. After dropping the anchor, I discovered that our dinghy motor was broken and my bicycle had a flat tire. We rowed across the …
If you look at Puget Sound on a map, you’ll notice that all the water has to flow through a single narrow passage west of Tacoma. This passage is called – wait for it – The Tacoma Narrows. You don’t want to be traveling through the Narrows against the current, which can easily exceed five …
Say the planet is born at midnight and it runs for one day. First there is nothing. Two hours are lost to lava and meteors. Life doesn’t show up until three or four a.m. Even then, it’s just the barest self-copying bits and pieces. From dawn to late morning—a million million years of branching—nothing more …
Ever hit your finger with a hammer, or date someone that you knew from the start was totally unsuitable, or buy a disco record? In short, did you ever experience a self-inflicted wound? Our trip this morning from Blake Island to Gig Harbor was something like this. All me actually. Mary Anne had nothing to …