Port Hadlock

Originally - a Cabin in Indexxx at Lorne's Landing at the wet foot of the Skykomish. Imagining hot tub & river dip. She ordered - Maine Lobster Now: Lobster Roll Kit - 6 pack. Overnighted to the cabin. Then - the shipping partner for perishables in Tennessee couldn't move product bc of freezing rain & ice. Then - Snow & ice storms in Washington. Vehicles unable to reach the cabin. The cabin cancels. Diverted - to the 3-story Brighton Beach House in Port Hadlock, on a cliff over Port Townsend Bay, peeking Indian Island.

Ferry cafeteria: hot cheese, tater tots, stale pretzels, chowder, fountain sodas. To - Chimacum Corner Farmstand; Henrik in short sprints and scary maybes near the wine bottles. We play the word in our mouths Chim-a-cum. Buddha's Hands are $13.99/lb, smell delicious. 

Play: Linda Perhacs' 1970 album, Parallelograms; the song "Chimacum Rain," a work inspired by Chimacum's natural environment. 

Port Hadlock-Irondale is "a bedroom community for the surrounding towns." Brighton Beach House - off the main floor is a deck with a built-in bar on the railing, overlooks bay. On the deck below, a hot tub with the same, lower, view. A maze of steep stairs winds down to the water. We are between the kitchen, pecking cheeses, and the dining room table working a puzzle that fatigues the brain and eye, calling for respites in intervals. Eat: Hempler's styrofoam-packed meat sticks, queso, guacamole. Watch - American Nightmare, then Love on the Spectrum. The five of us hot tub till pruned. 

Saturday morning we drive to Port Townsend for breakfast at the Blue Moose Cafe. It is quirky but includes bristles of hair in the Ode to Ina scrapple. I want to forget, so I delete the photographs, which is sad because scrapple is full of texture. 

To Fort Worden - The 1898 Endicott Period US Army Coast Artillery Corps meant to protect Puget Sound from invasion turned Nat'l Historic Landmark. Signs dotted, "No Pool Tax." Past: Commanding Officer's Quarters on Officer's Row and the Batteries to Point Wilson Lighthouse. "The forts never fired a hostile shot, and many of the guns were removed during World War I for use in Europe." Here we braid in traverse, re-joining in view of large-headed sea lions, skipping rocks, eyes swallow white ridgeline, playing at brief concrete soccer. 

After - a 20 mile run in unincorporated Chimacum. Off highways, through sad wet parks that smell like damp dog waste. Stop to observe horses & shaggy miniatures & the Egg & I Rd (Betty MacDonald's book, The Egg and I, upon which the Ma and Pa Kettle films were based, described the author's experiences on a chicken farm on the road that became Egg & I Rd). That night she makes homemade focaccia; it is rightfully oily. Listen to Funkadelic - Maggot Brain. The chef has talked up chili burritos to a nay-unrealistic level of hierarchy. The chili is bubbling. Each burrito is made singularly, adorned first in a cheese melt, then red riced, then chili'd, then folded, then browned. 

Sunday morning we pack up and drive to Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island - Est. 1897, activated 1899, a coast artillery fort, that along with Fort Worden & Fort Casey, once guarded Admirality Inlet, the nautical entrance to Puget Sound as part of a "Triangle of Fire" defensive plan. Closed June 1953. Bursts of deer. A wooden beaver behind bars. Mini churches in neat rows. The cavernous inside, with cemented toilets and disjointed graffiti. 

Our group of women & Henrik drive home in a fit of naps & snacks.