"The Gig" (and Tacoma and Bremerton)

On our last day in Gig Harbor, the tide - and the mountain - were both out!

This blog features an overview of the town of Gig Harbor, where the trailer spent 19 nights, its much larger next door neighbor Tacoma, and our Seattle ferry base of Bremerton. While we used Gig Harbor as a base camp to explore both Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula we also found plenty of time to "really get to know" this area at the lower end of Puget Sound.

Here's an interesting tidbit about Gig Harbor: You know how you type in the name of a town for a map or weather report, and several different places show up? For example, there is a Bridgeport in Connecticut, but also another Bridgeport all away across the continent in Washington.

If you type in Gig Harbor, you won’t get a twin. It's the only town with that name in the U.S. The town is named after the boat that the first explorers used to discover the scenic bay with salmon running out of the creeks.

The local museum features this replica of the “gig” skiff that was part of the Wilkes expedition in 1841 that found the opening in the sand pit to the harbor from Puget Sound. Because the bay waters became so shallow at low tide a special boat was needed they called it a "gig," and our adopted town got its unique name.

We’ve come to love this little nautical town, with a couple of great breweries (including $10 growlers on Wednesday), live music on the harbor on Tuesdays (although both times we’ve attended were cold and rainy), Thursday Farmer’s Markets (which we missed), and a great homey feel. We could walk down to the harbor from our RV park, and took advantage a few times, including our first and last nights there. We also pretended to be local citizens, using the beautiful local library for WiFi access to post some of these blogs.

The other major city in the ‘hood is Tacoma, which is just a few miles away via the impressive Tacoma Narrows bridge. While beautiful, this bridge has a checkered past. The workers constructing the original bridge in the late 30s in windy conditions nicknamed it “Galloping Gertie” because of the twisting motion it made in winds. When it opened to traffic July 1, 1940, it was the third-largest suspension bridge after the Golden Gate Bridge and George Washington Bridge.  However, its fame was short-lived, as four months later it dramatically collapsed in 40-mph winds into Puget Sound, marking it as probably the biggest (luckily) non-fatal engineering disaster in U.S. history.

Dave took this photo of Galloping Gertie's much sturdier successor while biking from Gig Harbor to Tacoma.

World War II and the need for scrap metal delayed its replacement. Finally, a new bridge was built in 1950 and a second eastbound bridge was completed in 2007. It’s a spectacular way to enter a cool, understated city our RV host describes as a “wanna-be” Portland.

We’re not sure that’s a fair assessment, but that doesn’t make us like this place any less. First Dave explored the area via a bike trail that connects Gig Harbor to Tacoma, and we then followed up twice for visits to museums, parks, breweries, and (of course) a baseball game!

On our first visit visit together, we walked across a museum district bridge enhanced by several Dale Chihuly glass pieces, immersed ourselves into state history at the local museum, and then headed to the 7 Seas Brewery where we got our first clear sighting of the big mountain in Tacoma. The brewery space was open and inviting, and we decided we might return.

Outside the Tacoma museum district are several colorful displays of glass artisan Dale Chihuly, a native of Tacoma. If we had known this, we could have saved some bucks we spent in Seattle!

This is cool. I never knew the origin of “your number is up,” At the state history museum in Tacoma, this display explained that coal miners put their numbered metal disk on these boards before heading into the mine, and then collected the disk after returning for the day. Of course, if your number was "up," you were probably in trouble. The managers would send workers back to locate that miner, who often was buried underneath something.

We caught this crazy view of Mt. Rainier on the way into a Tacoma brewery. It still looks fake!

We did return for a baseball game a few days later. The fans in the almost full AAA park (Mariner’s affiliate) were greeted with sunny 70-degree conditions, a well-pitched and well-defended game, and then a home victory thanks to a two-run 8^th-inning rally. I got my mascot pictures in early and was able to relax and enjoy the clever running gag the promotions crew ran throughout the game. It featured a local safety “inspector” who would interrupt the many dangerous escapades planned by the mascot Rhubarb Raindeer and his crew.

As each inning progressed, the catcalls and boos from the hundreds of day camp kids got louder. It’s always good for kids to have a villain (as Disney knows), even if this villain looked a lot like Dave in his old bureaucracy days.

When Dave looked up information on the local mascot during the game, he unearthed a story from last season about a skit performed on the stadium roof, after which the team was fined for safety violations. We may never know if this regulator-as-villain performance was related to the news story, but it sure makes you think so.

Our Tacoma Rainiers AAA baseball game was a treat. Great seats, great weather, great game, and even great entertainment. (As an aside, the popcorn was meh.)

Not only did Betsy get a photo with the "primary" Tacoma Rainiers mascot Rhubarb the Raindeer, she also found the team's “tertiary” mascot Polar Boy.

We were happy to get our shirts before heading to Mt. Rainier National Park. Our only regret was that there was no Rainier beer at the game.

After the game, we had some time before the 3:33 to 4:33 Oyster Happy Hour at 7 Seas Brewery, so we drove through a large leafy public park that forms the point of the peninsula in Old Tacoma. The Point Defiance name was aspirational, as the Wilkes party who discovered it in the 1830s thought it would be an excellent defensive location, and President Andy Jackson even set land aside for military purposes. That usage never came to pass, so the land transferred to the city, luckily before development took over, and the 760 acres now hosts trails, rose and dahlia gardens, an aquarium and zoo. On a loop drive we were able to look across the sound to Gig Harbor.

On our visit to the beautiful Point Defiance peninsula in Tacoma, we finally found some blooming Dahlias.

Perhaps my favorite story about the park is that it hosts another Superfund project, not unlike its Butte, Montana neighbors to the east. Apparently a 26-acre slag heap had grown from deposits of Arasco’s copper plant over the years. Quoting a recent Seattle Times story recounting the history: “Beneath the smelter’s 571-foot smokestack, kettles of industrial waste were carted along rails to the peninsula’s edge, where it was dumped, still glowing, into Puget Sound,”

Wow. But again, thanks to three decades of Superfund-funded projects to cart off slag and cap off materials, a new safe park has been restored and it opened just last month. It’s named Dune Park, after famous native son Frank Hebert’s classic science fiction novel.

Slag and literature! What a great combination - and another true reclamation story.

Back in Gig Harbor, a local brochure alerted us to a "Skiffs and Spirits" evening walking tour. Stephanie, the director of the Harbor History museum, led a group of mostly old white people down the harbor, telling stories about the town’s founding mothers and fathers, and going into detail about the fishing history. She had grown up in the town, working in museums in L.A., New England and D.C. before returning home.

It looks like Dave "gigged" a fish on our harbor walking tour.

While Dave and I have never taken to fishing as a hobby, our time in Lake Superior has helped us appreciate the importance of this industry in creating and sustaining these habitats. We learned a new term – Purse Seiner – about a seine net that was created to tighten like a purse drawstring around a catch, and the tour guide pointed out the Purse Seiner boats, as well as the gill net boats we were familiar with.

The tour ended at a distillery, where the young bartender walked us through our flight of local spirits. He had also left his hometown to make it “big” in Hollywood, but, as many of these stories progress, he too ended up back in The Gig. But his performance in charming the clients and explaining the tastes was worthy of an Oscar, in our opinion. I rejected my inclination to buy a bottle of the super-tasty Brown Sugar Bourbon, and we headed home with a much greater appreciation of our temporary home.

One of our overall trip objectives was to identify local festivals. Until our last weekend in the area, we’d had little luck. However, on our next-to-last day, we made our commute one more time to the Navy town of Bremerton to participate in the Washington Beerfest, which had been on our calendar since we learned about it a month ago. It was a picture-perfect day, and fun to sip 4-oz samples of Washington-brewed beer while watching the ferry travelers come and go. We also ate some Washington barbecue – not bad for a non-Texas food truck - and headed home.

We didn’t explore the nautical-themed parkland by the Bremerton ferry terminal until our last visit. Lots of kids were enjoying the fountain features, which resemble submarine pilot houses.

Thank goodness we didn’t have to heed these signs. That could have been a bumpy ferry ride if the “big one” hit during our stay.

This was our view of the Bremerton boardwalk, home of the Washington Beer Festival. In the background is the destroyer Turner Joy, which was built in Seattle and was one of the two ships involved in the controversial 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to U.S. engagement in the Vietnam war.

Luckily, our last day happened to be the first day of the two-day Arts Festival in Gig Harbor. After running some errands and preparing the trailer for an early exit Sunday, we traipsed downtown to check it out.

After I got the picture of the “origin” boat that spawned the name of the town at the Harbor History museum, we stumbled onto a revelation that seems ridiculous in retrospect. 

In our 16 nights spent in Gig Harbor, and multiple trips into town, we had never seen the big mountain from the town. However, in the museum I spotted a promotional brochure showing Mt. Rainier in the background of the barn where the 94-year-old fishing boat Shenandoah was being restored. I asked the young museum clerk if the mountain had been photoshopped into the photo and she seemed uncertain. So we walked around the corner and up the stairs and – voila – a huge snow-peaked mountain loomed in the distance on this bright blue clear day. We took a few more photographs before heading back to our original destination.

It wasn't until our last day when we got our first view of Mt. Rainier from our home base of Gig Harbor. This is a fun shot through the shed where the Habor History Museum is restoring an almost 100-year-old fishing boat. By the way, the mountain is so huge it still looks fake, like someone painted it on a matte finish on a movie set background.

 

We found some great local souvenirs on the way, strolled by the many arts and crafts vendors, ate a freshly grilled salmon sandwich, and visited the home production plant of 7 Seas, our new favorite local brewery.

On our last day in Gig Harbor, we visited the Arts Festival. We found the local brewery had the best “craft” offering, but these sidewalk paintings were fun.

After we strolled along the tents and got a growler filled at the home of 7 Seas, we flagged down the cheap local trolley for a ride back up the hill to home. The next day we headed east toward Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens, but it was a great way to finish our visit to this charming (and well-located) town; the newest entry on our growing list of "Places We've Been That We'd Like To Go Back To."