Hello once again to all our friends and family. Now that it is about time for us to leave our “home” in Chimacum, Washington and begin another adventure, I figured I’d better get all of you caught up with the blog.
We arrived in Chimacum, which is on the Olympic Pennisula, on March 27th and had planned on spending a couple of months here. On the morning of the 27th, we left Oregon in the pouring rain. As we traveled closer to Washington, the weather changed to sunny, then to cloudy and finally to snow! This was McKenzie’s first experience with that wet, white stuff and she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She wanted to bury her nose in it and push it around. Once her nose and toes got cold, she was ready to head back to the truck.
We pulled onto our site and after a brief few days of rest, we began cleaning out the trailer and truck and deciding what could be left here in the storage building. Once we got everything out that we wanted to leave, we were amazed that we had had any room at all in the trailer.
The park looked as beautiful as ever with all the tulips, natural rhodies, and pansies in bloom. Several of the folks who live here several months out of the year or year round, have decided to put “park models” on their lots. They still cannot be over 400 square feet, but many of the folks feel this is a better solution for their way of life. 
The main road is lined with cherry trees that blossom out in mid May. 
During the month of April, it snowed 4 times – usually only a small amount that did not stick to the ground, but on one occasion, we had huge, fluffy snow flakes that came down for about 4 hours and it was truly beautiful to see all the snow in the trees.
This past spring has been a very cold and damp spring, not what we had experienced six years ago when we were here as Assistant Managers. The “dry rain” was so soft and gentle that it did not keep us from doing anything that we wanted to do outdoors – nothing like the downpours we have in Texas!!
We spent time with our friends, Brenda and John Haworth who live in Sequim and also are fellow RVers. It was always fun to go to their place and see the wildlife that comes around, raccoons
come right up to the porch and the deer are not shy either as they love to munch on Brenda’s flowers and shrubs. 
Sequim is the lavender capital of North America and has the Olympic Mountains at its back and the Strait of Juan de Fuca in its face. It is located about 23 miles from our park and is a large enough town to have most of the stores and necessities one needs. In May, the mountains were still wearing a lot of snow. 
One of our day excursions with Brenda and John was over to Keyport, Washington to visit the Naval Undersea Museum.
They had some very interesting displays featuring the history of undersea warfare and exploration. It is an official Navy museum and exhibits torpedos, submarine technology and diving technology. Sub Group 9 commands all the Trident submarines in the Pacific Ocean. The Naval Base Kitsap is the only base for Tridents on the U.S. west coast. Nine Tridents have their homeport at Bangor on the Hood Canal. The Tridents are always on patrol somewhere in the world’s oceans. No one ashore and only a few crew members know where the boat is for security measures. Each Trident has two complete crews – a Blue crew and a Gold crew. The two crews allow the submarine to stay at sea for more than 8 months each year. One crew takes the boat on patrol while the other crew remains at Bangor and conducts pre-deployment training. 
An interesting exhibit was the Marine Rescue Chamber which was designed and operated to rescue sailors from sunken submarines. It had the ability to descent to 850 feet. On May 23, 1939, a McCann Rescue Chamber successfully rescued 33 crew members from the USS Squalas, trapped on the bottom at 240 feet. This event was both the first and last time the Navy rescued men from a sub using a rescue chamber.
The latest rescue vehicle is the DSRV (Deep Submarine Rescue Vehicle) which is designed to search out a nuclear submarine in distress, mate itself to the sub’s escape hatch and take up to 25 crew members at a time from a disabled sub. It is capable of diving 5,000 feet and can be transported by air, surface ship, or sub to the rescue location. The museum had a mock up of this vehicle which was built by Paramount Studios and featured in the film “Hunt for Red October”.
Another outing was to the Art Deco Light Museum in Port Townsend. The city is full of Victorian houses that have been restored. Port Townsend was the first in Washington state to establish the Main Street program, encouraging preservation of historical districts, renovation and restoration of buildings. It is one of the few cities nationwide that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Kelly Art Deco light museum was created by a gentlemen who loved to collect lights. He soon acquired so many that he decided to create a “free museum” in the upstairs of his vintage hardware store so he could share his love of lights. In the museum are rare glimpses of lights from the years of 1928 – 1938. It is the only Art Deco Slip-Shade light museum in the world. The museum contains over 400 fixtures including hanging chandeliers, wall sconces and table lights which graced the homes of the middle and upper classes during the Great Depression. Some lights are so rare that no books have ever documented them and some became obsolete before a catalogue could be made to sell them.
We especially enjoyed the vintage hardware store below the light museum as well which sold all types of handles, locks, lights, fasteners, etc.
This state is a very diverse state, having dramatic changes in scenery. Worlds collide in Washington where the sea meets the forest, the forest meets the desert and snow-capped mountains tower above all. In our area, the Olympic Pennisula, we have Indian legends, mineral hot springs, a temperate rain forest, a Victorian Seaport and four-season outdoor recreation. Forts are prolific here and you can literally run yourself ragged trying to see everything and absorb all the history. Two months will only scratch the surface, but we’ll be back here again to do more investigating. It is a wonderful place to absorb Mother Nature. Watch for our next episode of life on the peninsula.
We arrived in Chimacum, which is on the Olympic Pennisula, on March 27th and had planned on spending a couple of months here. On the morning of the 27th, we left Oregon in the pouring rain. As we traveled closer to Washington, the weather changed to sunny, then to cloudy and finally to snow! This was McKenzie’s first experience with that wet, white stuff and she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She wanted to bury her nose in it and push it around. Once her nose and toes got cold, she was ready to head back to the truck.
We pulled onto our site and after a brief few days of rest, we began cleaning out the trailer and truck and deciding what could be left here in the storage building. Once we got everything out that we wanted to leave, we were amazed that we had had any room at all in the trailer.
The park looked as beautiful as ever with all the tulips, natural rhodies, and pansies in bloom. Several of the folks who live here several months out of the year or year round, have decided to put “park models” on their lots. They still cannot be over 400 square feet, but many of the folks feel this is a better solution for their way of life. The main road is lined with cherry trees that blossom out in mid May. During the month of April, it snowed 4 times – usually only a small amount that did not stick to the ground, but on one occasion, we had huge, fluffy snow flakes that came down for about 4 hours and it was truly beautiful to see all the snow in the trees.
This past spring has been a very cold and damp spring, not what we had experienced six years ago when we were here as Assistant Managers. The “dry rain” was so soft and gentle that it did not keep us from doing anything that we wanted to do outdoors – nothing like the downpours we have in Texas!!We spent time with our friends, Brenda and John Haworth who live in Sequim and also are fellow RVers. It was always fun to go to their place and see the wildlife that comes around, raccoons
come right up to the porch and the deer are not shy either as they love to munch on Brenda’s flowers and shrubs. Sequim is the lavender capital of North America and has the Olympic Mountains at its back and the Strait of Juan de Fuca in its face. It is located about 23 miles from our park and is a large enough town to have most of the stores and necessities one needs. In May, the mountains were still wearing a lot of snow. One of our day excursions with Brenda and John was over to Keyport, Washington to visit the Naval Undersea Museum.
They had some very interesting displays featuring the history of undersea warfare and exploration. It is an official Navy museum and exhibits torpedos, submarine technology and diving technology. Sub Group 9 commands all the Trident submarines in the Pacific Ocean. The Naval Base Kitsap is the only base for Tridents on the U.S. west coast. Nine Tridents have their homeport at Bangor on the Hood Canal. The Tridents are always on patrol somewhere in the world’s oceans. No one ashore and only a few crew members know where the boat is for security measures. Each Trident has two complete crews – a Blue crew and a Gold crew. The two crews allow the submarine to stay at sea for more than 8 months each year. One crew takes the boat on patrol while the other crew remains at Bangor and conducts pre-deployment training. An interesting exhibit was the Marine Rescue Chamber which was designed and operated to rescue sailors from sunken submarines. It had the ability to descent to 850 feet. On May 23, 1939, a McCann Rescue Chamber successfully rescued 33 crew members from the USS Squalas, trapped on the bottom at 240 feet. This event was both the first and last time the Navy rescued men from a sub using a rescue chamber.
The latest rescue vehicle is the DSRV (Deep Submarine Rescue Vehicle) which is designed to search out a nuclear submarine in distress, mate itself to the sub’s escape hatch and take up to 25 crew members at a time from a disabled sub. It is capable of diving 5,000 feet and can be transported by air, surface ship, or sub to the rescue location. The museum had a mock up of this vehicle which was built by Paramount Studios and featured in the film “Hunt for Red October”.
Another outing was to the Art Deco Light Museum in Port Townsend. The city is full of Victorian houses that have been restored. Port Townsend was the first in Washington state to establish the Main Street program, encouraging preservation of historical districts, renovation and restoration of buildings. It is one of the few cities nationwide that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Kelly Art Deco light museum was created by a gentlemen who loved to collect lights. He soon acquired so many that he decided to create a “free museum” in the upstairs of his vintage hardware store so he could share his love of lights. In the museum are rare glimpses of lights from the years of 1928 – 1938. It is the only Art Deco Slip-Shade light museum in the world. The museum contains over 400 fixtures including hanging chandeliers, wall sconces and table lights which graced the homes of the middle and upper classes during the Great Depression. Some lights are so rare that no books have ever documented them and some became obsolete before a catalogue could be made to sell them.
We especially enjoyed the vintage hardware store below the light museum as well which sold all types of handles, locks, lights, fasteners, etc.This state is a very diverse state, having dramatic changes in scenery. Worlds collide in Washington where the sea meets the forest, the forest meets the desert and snow-capped mountains tower above all. In our area, the Olympic Pennisula, we have Indian legends, mineral hot springs, a temperate rain forest, a Victorian Seaport and four-season outdoor recreation. Forts are prolific here and you can literally run yourself ragged trying to see everything and absorb all the history. Two months will only scratch the surface, but we’ll be back here again to do more investigating. It is a wonderful place to absorb Mother Nature. Watch for our next episode of life on the peninsula.
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