Day 46: Port Townsend
Welcome
Yesterday we played our final show of the tour at Thing Festival in Port Townsend, Washington.
The view from our balcony was just as gorgeous as I had imagined when we arrived the night before. I sat on the couch and looked out over the entrance to the Port Townsend Port, a marina with a mighty stone breakwater, and on this fine Sunday morning there were plenty of small watercraft leaving its safety and making their way out into the bay.
Jon and Gabe headed over to the festival in the morning to set up our sound equipment, a precaution after the last couple of bad experiences. Tristan and I set out for a walk loosely in search of a breakfast but also eager to explore this attractive piece of coastline. We wandered past the marina and into a boatyard where craft of various sizes and styles were in various states of repair. There were plenty of sheds and workshops I would have loved to poke my head into, but it was the weekend, and everything was closed except for a few painters who were perched under hulls, making the most of the nice weather.
The first café we came upon was extremely busy due to patronage from the nearby music festival so we decided to walk up to the historic old town, an area of the waterfront ripe with Victorian era buildings and a vibrant shopping and restaurant scene. Everything was abustle here too, but after some hustling we managed to find a table at a Mexican restaurant called La Cocina and I ordered myself a colourful plate of huevos rancheros.
At 2.30 we headed over to the festival, which was at Fort Worden Historical State Park, only a five-minute drive from our accommodation. Perched on the northern tip of the Quimper Peninsula this park is dotted with old military barracks from the turn of the century as well as rich belts of Sequoia and Douglas Fir trees. The crew of Thing Festival were fantastic. The Patch had already been completed before we arrived and when it came time for us to play our changeover was swift and easy. There were a couple of technical hitches during the set where the stage suffered power cuts but apart from that it was a breeze. It was another beautiful outdoor show in a part of the world that we felt incredibly privileged to visit and we couldn’t have asked for a nicer final show for this tour.
We also got to watch some fantastic music over the afternoon and evening. Kassa Overall, a Seattle-based jazz and hip hop artist played on our stage in the slot before us. His performance was heavy – soaked in profound lyricism and propulsive grooves and coloured with emotive bouts of improvisation and interaction. We also saw the legendary Digable Planets (with Kassa sitting in on drums) and then watched Los Angeles musician Thundercat and his trio dish out a great deal of virtuosic six string bass playing.
Thundercat.
On the far side of a large open area that was being used as the festival carpark is a concrete structure wearing a sign that reads ‘Port Townsend School of Woodworking’. My enthusiasm for hand tool woodworking had led me to discover this place online but I hadn’t realised it would be on the same grounds as the festival, and I was thrilled to see that the front doors were open when I wandered over after our set. There were a few staff members inside vacuuming up and sharpening tools and they let me have a look around this extremely well-equipped facility. More hand planes than I had ever laid eyes on lined the shelves and cabinets of this large workshop and there was a collection of workbenches with student-made stools atop them. These stools are the first project of one of the courses they teach and a useful seat for the remainder of said course.
Tristan and I stayed to the end of the festival and then walked back to our motel along the dark, sleepy streets of Port Townsend. Cars were leaving the park and luckily the drivers were slow and careful because there were plenty of wild deer wandering about and being very casual about their road crossing. There was some good foraging to be had on our route and Tristan found us a couple of tasty apple trees as well as some beautifully ripe blackberries for dessert. We were back at our room and in bed before midnight; this was an early night by tour standards, which we were grateful for.
The next morning, we would be driving back to Seattle and returning our stupid van before boarding a pair of flights to get us back home to Auckland. We then have the luxury of a month’s break before we return to the US for our support tour with Postal Service and Deathcab for Cutie.
Here is one final video from Tristan with some great content from the last few days of this run.
Thanks to everyone for reading, commenting, and writing me. If you would like to get in touch you can reach me at breakfastandtravelupdates@breakfastandtravelupdates.com
Thanks to Tristan, Liz, Jon, and Gabe for being amazing friends and so easy to tour with.
Thanks to my family and my partner Tess for supporting me from afar.
Ka kite anō au i a koutou