We decided to take a little break in our visits to gas stations and stay put for a month. Being members of the Escapees RV Club, we have not experienced a stay at the Evergreen Coho SKP Park in Chimacum, WA, so that is exactly where we chose to call home. We can now say we have stayed at 18 of the 19 SKP parks, scattered between Washington and Florida. This was 1 of the 11 coop parks in the SKP system. The park itself was very nice with well maintained landscaping and facilities. It is in a good location, within striking distance of Port Townsend, Sequim, Poulsbo, Bremerton, and Quilcene, as well as having access in Port Townsend & Port Angeles to ferries to places like Victoria, BC and Coupeville (Anacortes area), WA.

SKP parks are notorious for many extracurricular activities. We got wind of a group hike activity on Sundays and jumped right in. A group of 7 of us tackled a 3.5 mile hike within Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island. The hike took us by numerous battery positions that were built at the fort in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s and used for national defense. Parts of the trail took us up on the ridge/cliffs and afforded beautiful views of the various inlet areas in and around Puget Sound as well as distant looks at Mt. Baker and Mt. Ranier, both very snow-covered.

One of our hike-mates mentioned we were here just in time for the Ruckus event taking place in Port Townsend later in the day. Ruckus is the pre-race get-together in town for the annual R2AK – Race to Alaska. We learned R2AK is a watercraft race, about 750 miles in length, from Port Townsend, WA to Ketchikan, AK. I say “watercraft” because racers use all forms of floating devices including SUP’s (stand up paddle boards), no motors are allowed. We wandered around the Ruckus, taking in the festive atmosphere and viewing the “boats” that were on display. The race was to start early the following day but we took a pass on attending the start.

Anderson Lake State Park is located next to the SKP park and contains several trails, parts & pieces surrounding Anderson Lake. We hit the “B” trail for about a 2.6 mile circle around the lake. The trails were fairly well maintained and marked. Trail “B” did not stay real close to the lake itself, but did feel like we were hiking a rain forest since tree canopy covered it completely and we hiked through heavy vegetation. There were tons of ferns, nettles, and goofy growing trees but no critters of note on this hike. Poor ol’ Anderson Lake is currently off limits for water fun – it is afflicted with a toxic algae bloom. I guess swimming laps is out of the question…

Our next little adventure was a mild road trip to Lake Crescent west of Port Angeles. We chose the Merrymere Falls Trail to do a short hike to the falls. It was about a mile and a half trek, round trip, on a well maintained trail through the jungle. I’ll let the pictures tell the story…

One day we made a chores trip into the area of Poulsbo; Costco, CVS, etc. We got some nice scenic views of Hood Canal with snowy mountains on the horizon, courtesy of the Hood Canal Bridge which is a floating bridge made out of concrete (?). I guess I shoulda took engineering in college to figure that one out…On the way home we passed through the area of Port Ludlow, where Jeanne had discovered a very short trail to Ludlow Falls. It is only a little more than a half mile round trip and is an interpretive trail (aka: has lots of signs describing foliage, history of the area and its uses, and history of the formations of the area). Since it seems the overwhelming theme of this whole spin through Washington is waterfalls, sign me up! Again, it felt rain forest-y with a complete canopy of trees and lots of green ground cover. 

Another group hike found us meandering around Fort Worden State Park. I say “meandering” because it was basically a walk around the park on a paved, interior road. This particular 1.75 mile “hike” snaked its way in and amongst several battery positions more toward the interior of the park with not a lot of ocean views. Our walk was fairly level and easy but hey, any exercise is good exercise, right?

The Larry Scott Trail is a little over 7 mile long hike/bike trail we found nearby that snakes around the peninsula toward Port Townsend. One of the semi-clear, non-rain days we gave the bicycles a workout and biked the 14+ mile round trip. The trail is well maintained and well marked, crossing several roads and driveways as it winds through some pretty thick tree cover. There were a couple of pretty good, thankfully short grades but otherwise it was an easy trail. Unfortunately, the views were predominantly green growth with the only views of Port Townsend Bay appearing in the last mile on the trail.

On our previous group hike at Fort Worden we only covered a small portion of the hiking trails and by-passed the Point Wilson Lighthouse. We returned to the fort in between rain storms and did another walk to the lighthouse. As far as lighthouses go, Point Wilson is a bit underwhelming but still offers scenic views of Port Townsend Bay. We also explored another battery position that was close to the lighthouse, Battery Kinzie. It was interesting to learn that it required (51) men to operate  each of the (2) 12” cannons, from loading to aiming to firing. After all, the guns weights were not measured in pounds but in tons and the shells weighed in at a half-ton. The Battery Kinzie had a pretty cool feature in that I could enter a section and explore an eerie, very dark downstairs walkway that led to another section of the battery. Someone had even scrawled some ghostly graffiti at the top of the stairs, posing the question, “What’s below?”

Our final Sunday group hike took us to the Miller Peninsula State Park. This hike was a little over 4 miles, round trip, again through heavy canopy and thick undergrowth. Critters were pretty much non-existent, but we did get to see some neat fungi/mushroom formations along the path. The trail ended at a large beach area and we got a fantastic view of the bay…NOT! It seems we had traded the on & off rain for daily doses of heavy fog (kind of a left coast staple). Oh well, we should enjoy the cool temps while they last, since we have planned our next destination to be in the heart of the desert southwest, currently experiencing 100+ degree temps.

Our time at the Evergreen Coho SKP park came to an end seemingly very quickly. The month of June just screamed right by us. It certainly helped that we had plenty of chores and repairs to work on in between fun times, such as swapping out the kitchen sink hardware (leaky valve), replacing the coach’s water pump, wash/wax the beast and toad, painting another load of rocks (#RVersrock) for nationwide distribution, and numerous shopping runs to the big box stores. Now it was time to batten down the hatches and hit the road to…well, you’re just gonna have to wait, until next post…