Kitsap Peninsula
Lighthouses
A Walk Through Point No Point County Park
Monday, January 02, 2017TheCambrians
You’ve got to hand it to the early European explorers. They came up with some interesting and descriptive
names for the places they charted: There’s Cape Caution, Foulweather Bluff, Useless Bay
and Cape Fear, to name only a few. But my personal favourite has to be Point No
Point because it always prompts stupid questions from me and David like,
“what’s the point?”
To
Charles Wilkes, who named it in 1841, there wasn’t one. But he was wrong.
Now
on the National Historic Register and a Kitsap County Park, it’s hard not to
see the point: A beautiful, driftwood strewn beach, the site of Puget Sound’s
first lighthouse, an Important Bird Area and a trail that runs through a small
section of forest offer an excellent place to spend the day . . . and to take a
walk.
Only
a 20-minute drive north of Kingston
to the seaside village of Hansville, the first attraction is actually outside the park boundaries on the
road leading to Point No Point Lighthouse. In 1971, the M/V Jupiter Inlet, a 185-foot ocean-going
naval tug, was sold for scrap and the bridge and found a second life as a house
– I’d love to have a look inside!
We
like to start our walk along the beach near the lighthouse keeper’s duplex.
Half
of the duplex houses the executive offices of the US Lighthouse Society (which
moved from San
Francisco to
Hansville) and the other half is open for holiday rental. Tours are given on Saturdays
at one and three
o’clock from April through
September, but we’ve never been inside.
In
the side yard, there’s a garden with interesting sculptures made out of
driftwood.
And
a plaque commemorating the signing of the Point No Point Treaty in 1855 between
the leaders of the S’Klallam, Chimacum and Skokomish Native tribes and the
governor of Washington, ceding land from the crest of the Olympic Mountains to Puget Sound to
the United
States.
Point
No Point Lighthouse is next. Docents are on site from 12 to 4:00 pm on weekends, April through September, to help answer questions and
for short tours but it’s not possible to climb the tower to see the Fresnel
lens which was taken out of use in 2006 (an automated optic light is now in
operation).
We
like to follow the shoreline south for a mile or so, enjoying the driftwood
forts . . .
.
. . before climbing the stairs to the forest along the ridge that leads to
another trailhead.
On
the way back to the parking lot, we like to walk inland a bit through the
wetlands and an Important Bird Area.
And
that wraps up our walk through Point No Point County Park in Hansville, Washington. I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like to read more
walks through interesting and unique places, you can check out Restless Jo and
Jo’s Monday Walks.
How about you? Have you been on an interesting walk
lately? We’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.
10 comments
Great Post. Thats a lot of driftwood on that beach. Great photos.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great spot. We're really lucky it's so close to our winter home. Thanks, Captain!
DeleteI love the driftwood sculptures! I'm still confused as to whether there's a point or not....haha!
ReplyDeleteLol. I don't know why that joke always makes me laugh, but it does. And yeah, the sculptures are really cool. I especially like the horse.
DeleteSome people are so creative. I would never be able to create sculptures out of driftwood like those. They're fantastic!
ReplyDeleteI know. Who looks at a piece of driftwood and says, "I can make a giraffe out this, no worries." And then does. It's pretty impressive.
DeleteThose sculptures are great. I love art made from "nature's discards". :-) And, that lighthouse looks tiny! Did you get to do this walk again recently? Not much going on here in the suburbs... We hope to find more interesting sits in the future, where we can enjoy some incredible walks again.
ReplyDeleteThe week of Thanksgiving, it was really wet and we spent too much time inside the boat so when it turned out to be nice the next day, I drove up for a walk and to shake off the cobwebs. Right now, the pickings for walks is pretty slim for the same reason you mentioned -- life in the suburbs. But I hope to find a couple of interesting places to explore while I'm here.
DeleteMy kind of walking, Stephanie :) A beach, a lighthouse, and somebody's already built me a home on the beach! Or maybe that boathouse would be better :) Many thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, Jo! I can hardly wait to hit the beaches in your neck of the woods again -- long stretches of sand just waiting to be walked upon.
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