After visiting the Hoh Rain Forest we drove on to Sequim, Washington, to spend the night. Next morning, Saturday, October 2, we went on the short drive to be enlightened and entertained for the day in Port Townsend. Map.
Port Townsend is a special place to Don. Not only is one of his favorite magazines, Liberty, published here, but more importantly he had planned to retire here at one time. It has one of the best climates in the world and Washington is a low-tax state. Real estate is cheaper in Sequim though and it so is more popular with retirees.
If you have never heard of the town of Sequim, you will not have a chance of pronouncing it right. It is "skwim", one syllable. There are lots of Indian names hereabouts so one would think that it is just a peculiarity of some obscure tribal language. That is, until you remember that the aborigines had no written language. The aboriginal name for this place was not even close to "skwim" anyhow. Some local settlers (apparently with a warped sense of humor) decided to name it "squim", but then for a reason now lost to history, they added the 'e'.
To our surprise, when we went to reserve a room in Port Townsend for the Saturday night, all (four) hotels booked full! This was a good six weeks before the date. A little detective work (isn't Google wonderful?) revealed that there was an event there (surprise!). It is an annual thing called KultureKraft, or something like that. Apparently it varies somewhat year-to-year but this year it was to be a "race" of fantastic, somewhat whimsical, human-powered vehicles. This appealed to Don enormously, so we scheduled most of the day there.
We found that there was to be a parade down the main street (Water St.) followed by an inspection by race officials.
