Vacation Day 7

This day is the main reason I have persistently, if slowly, kept blogging about this vacation. Day 7 was my favorite! For starters, there was no rain! We piled into two cars and drove north. We took a pit stop at a cute Dutch bakery in Marysville (I think) where we had pastries, orange bread, pineapple bread, and salty black licorice candy. Only the guy who lived in the Netherlands for two years liked that last one. It's evidently an acquired taste.

After maybe another hour of driving, we arrived at Deception Pass. The history at that link is more extensive, but basically Deception Pass is a very narrow and rocky waterway that separates Whidbey Island from the mainland; so until the pass was discovered, Whidbey Island was thought to be part of the mainland. It also had some strategic importance - it was fortified in World War I.

At the north end of the bridge, we pulled over into the scenic view pullout and took our first look at the bridge. Actually, there is a small but very tall rocky island in the middle separating the bridge into two bridges. From the pullout we could see the southern bridge and the adventurous kayakers down below us.


Most of us trekked across the bridge on foot, stopping on Pass Island to read the historical marker and to look up and down the narrow waterway.


On the south side of the bridge we debated for a while before deciding where to park - we headed into the campground area and parked close to the beach. Then we headed down to the beach, where we played, skipped rocks, attempted juggling, waded in the cold cold water, and ate our picnic lunch.


Here's Dan challenging one of his brothers to try and juggle. Of course you can't really hear the commentary over the sound of the ocean.



We wound our way south along the length of the island until we reached Fort Casey. (Thank you to the friends who suggested Fort Casey - it was a HUGE hit!) When we finally got our directions right and pulled into the parking lot, this is what we saw.


Hey! What's that weird guy doing in my picture? I'm going to try that again - this time, I'm going to draw red circles around a couple of people climbing around up on the fort to give a better idea of the scale of the picture. And yes, next to the person I circled on the right is a really big cannon.


We spent hours at Fort Casey. We played with the big guns - our heads fit in there! We also climbed up and down ladders to access the different levels of the fort, explored empty rooms, played soldier, found the lookout platforms in the cliff face, climbed down to the beach, and flew kites.



At first the brothers tried to fly the kites on the grass in the middle of the fort. Eventually they gave that up and moved up to the top of the cliff face. The only problem was that they had to run directly towards the drop-off to get the kites up in the air.



The dragon kite and the butterfly kite were really pretty up in the air together.



The only person who didn't like watching kites fly was the kid who would rather play with them on the ground.



When the wind finally died down we went to visit the lighthouse at the other end of the fort.


Then we rode the ferry back home, ate some taco soup for dinner, and played Taboo (memorable because the girls scored 18 cards in the final round in order to beat the boys, who were ahead by 11 at that point).