Port Townsend

We arrived in Port Townsend in the evening. The cloudy sunset was beautiful.









What motivated me to go to Port Townsend was a blogger who recently wrote about going there to hunt for beach glass. Because Port Townsend is an old city, and on the ocean, that leads to much beach glass. Up until the 1950's a lot of coastal towns dumped their trash into the sea. After 30 plus years of it tumbling around, it turns to a smooth sea glass that is sought after and desirable. I have always loved to beach comb and thought this sounded really fun. The blog I read didn't give details on where to go, but with a bit of searching I found that North Beach is near the old dump. Some websites indicated that you have to plan your visit so you don't get trapped out on the beach by a high tide.



Unfortunately, low tide was at 6am and not timed well for me to make the long trek to the treasure-filled beach.



I started out around 8:30 and had read that I might have to hike for almost 2 hours to reach the beach. I hiked and hiked, dog in tow. We only met two others out there which was great! And the birds were wonderful. We even saw some sea otters.




Harlequin Ducks



Leary of Maggie, a remote Gull.


Cuteness.


Common Mergansers (also swimming away from a lunging dog on leash).

We walked and walked and were lucky to not get rained on. There was a bit of benign drizzle, but nothing to scare me away from the excitement of a beach full of pretty glass.

Finally, we both started to tire and I could see the tide creeping in. At that point glass was becoming prevalent on the beach, but not very much and not as I expected. Some of the indicators (car parts jutting out of the beach, etc) had not appeared and I suspected we were still far from the old dump. I was worried about not being able to make it back to the parking lot with the tide coming in, so we called in a morning and headed back to the car at a steady clip. Good thing too, because there was a couple of difficult spots to walk on the beach. The beach is also quite rocky and treacherous (not all sandy).


Bald Eagle overhead.

**BUT** I did make it home with a few treasures which I will show you next time! Also, lots of photos of all the pretty things on the beach.