Visit Around Sequim

We spent the first two days here getting caught up with groceries, pet food shopping, banking, truck in for normal servicing and visited the Olympic National Park's visitor center in Port Angeles, a town 12 miles to the west of us to get orientated to the park.  So much to see there - will have to study and determine what we can and won't do.  Things are gearing up here in Sequim (SKWIM) for the Lavender Festival which is a 3 day festival starting the 19th.  Since the climate conditions here are perfect for growing lavender, lavender is a normal perennial flower growing in just about everyone's garden and on the roadside and planted around commercial buildings.  Even here at the campground you find this plant in many of the side gardens.  Pretty smelling too!  There are 5 commercial lavender gardens in the area and during the festival you can tour all 5.

An Ah-ha! we discovered in Sequim - there is a John Wayne Marina located just on the east end of the town and yes, it is named for the Duke.  According to the info given to us as a welcome package, he loved sailing his Wild Goose here in the Sequim area and donated the land for the development of the marina. I assumed the Wild Goose - from the way the town's visitor paper describes it - was a small sailboat, but not.   I did not know anything about it and found this video on YouTube about the boat.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbvzxcQCJWg   Wow.

Another ah-ha - is actor and AT&T spokesman Cliff Robertson also frequented this area and there is a road named after him. He visited here in Sequim and later in his life he moved here after retirement.

Spending a little bit of time in Port Angeles which is a seaport on the Strait of Juan De Fuca (body of water connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Pugent Sound of Seattle) you see a Coast Guard Station on the tip of the port and a big bustling lumber company processing large tree trunks and getting them ready for shipping out via the freighters.  No railroad comes into the peninsula so we don't hear any trains - thank goodness.  The fog is something - mornings are typically fogged in and in Sequim it burns off by 10am.  There are 300 days of sunshine, hence the city is knicknamed "Sunny Sequim." Not so in Port Angeles - the two days we have been there - fog has lingered all times of day.  And wind - wind off the Pacific Ocean blowing all the time.  Very cool nights - down to 50, days so far have been low 70s.  Pleasant, and even nippy at times.

There is so much to see and do but one thing we have to plan: just to get to some of the places at Olympic National Park is a good 2 to 3 hour drive one way.  No roads circumnavigate around the park so it's drive for hours to see, then drive back.  We would not even consider bringing the RV closer since the roads are very twisty turn and hugs cliffs.  Will just have to plan those visits with early get goings.