Fort Casey State Park, March 14-16, 2003
We arrived at Fort Casey on a windy but sunny afternoon, the fourth vehicle in the campground.
The campground at Fort Casey sits on a small inlet shared by the Port Townsend-Keystone ferry. Part of the ambiance of this park is to watch the ferries come and go.
State ferry crossing Admiralty Inlet, the mouth into Central and South Puget Sound.
The ferry approaches the entrance to the ferry slip. Yes, at times they seem almost close enough to reach out and touch!
the ferry enters the inlet at Keystone. The inlet is small and fairly shallow (runs get cancelled at extremely low tides) and the currents run parallel to the shoreline at the entrance as the tidal flow rushes through Admiralty inlet to fill or empty Puget Sound. This makes for a fairly tricky approach to the slip.
A serious windstorm blew up overnight and into Saturday morning, cancelling the first two morning ferry runs.
We caught the 1:30 pm run into Port Townsend. We wandered around the downtown area, visiting a used bookstore, and walking around the marina at the end of Water Street. After examining the boats in the Marina, we returned to Water Street and stopped at a bead store, where we examined a large selection of beads for Nikki's beading. From there, we went to the Surf Restaurant for dinner next to Union Warf. From there we caught the ferry back to Keystone and Fort Casey.
The lighthouse at Fort Casey is open as a museum, with a model of the layout of the fort, as well as the original fresnel lens from the lighthouse on display. The description of the fort and it's history is worth the trip over to the lighthouse.
Fort Casey is a coastal defense fort, part of the Puget Sound defense system, built late in the 19th century, before the airplane made them obsolete. Fort Casey, along with Fort Worden and Fort Flagler, provided a Triangle of Fire defending the entrance to Puget Sound through Admiralty Inlet. By World War II, these forts were no longer useful, and the guns were removed and melted down for the steel. When the Washington State Parks took over, some guns were recovered from the Phillipines, restored, and set up for display in the park.
Fort Casey has two six inch, disappearing carriage cannons mounted on display in the gun emplacements. These guns were actually rescued from the Phillipines in the 1950s and moved to Fort Casey. These cannons have gouges in the barrels which are markings left from attempts to destroy the guns during World War II.
Although the wind had died down Saturday evening, it picked up again overnight. Sunday morning we packed up in sunshine.