Today we planned to tootle on down to Olympia, but we were not in a hurry to get there. We had a minus low tide of (-1.6 feet) at 11:49am, so I figured we could wait until we had some ‘plus’ water before departing. The ‘check-in’ time at the Swantown marina is officially 3:00, and we had a slip assignment, so we might as well wait anyway.
I wandered around on land for a little bit and found some things to take pictures of. We had another Bayliner come into the dock around 9:00, and the people were super friendly. We chatted with them for a couple of hours which made the morning go by pretty fast.
Yep – the water was still out quite a ways! But more flowers to brighten the day!
We finally pulled our lines about 3:00 and headed out of the cove. By golly, there were five deer meandering along the shoreline!
It wasn’t a long ways to Olympia, and we were going with the incoming tide which gave us some extra boost in our speed (the red line is where we had favorable assistance). It only took a couple of hours to get there, so we were all tied up and happy by about 4:00.
Pretty soon, we saw a gaggle of junior sailors from the Olympia Yacht Club come out for a little spin. We are docked in the alley of the boat launch, and we were both really glad they weren’t coming out when we were coming in!
There were a few places that we could go to have a beer and see the area. Kenny used to work in this area, about… 47 years ago? And his mom and step-dad hung out in Olympia for years, and we’ll just say – it was never an upscale area. It was about a mile walk through an industrial area to get to anywhere from the marina. Once we got past the log yard, we found Percival Landing (green circle), which is where the farmer’s market is held Thursday through Sunday mornings. We’ll have to check that out tomorrow. I had us heading to the red circle for beer and dinner.
Once we got out of the industrial zone we found some nice areas with flowers!
This was a the Dancing Goats Coffee tasting room. I guess they actually have a tasting room to explore the different roast flavors. 🤷♀️. We’d never seen a coffee tasting room before, but they were already closed for today.
We found the Oly Taproom, and it was a happenin place. The weather was nice with temperatures around 70 degrees, so there were lots of people out enjoying the sun.
We decided to stay inside and sit at the bar, because it’s easier to get tastes of beer and it’s fun to visit with the bartenders.
I like this.
They had a pretty good selection of taps. I zeroed in on the Imperial Stout right away, and claimed it for myself. Kenny went for a Golden Coffee Stout. Huh?
Stouts should be dark. Mine was. Kenny’s was golden, which plays tricks with your brain. Your eyes see a normal colored beer, but if you close your eyes, it tastes like a really smooth coffee stout. It wasn’t bitter at all and was surprisingly good.
There was a huge cooler with hundreds of different craft beers from all over the place. We found these marshmallow sours from California. We’ve been looking everywhere to find sours with marshmallow, and haven’t seen any in Washington. The mallow really mellows out the pucker sourness, and makes the beverage more like a smoothie.
We decided to share the one with strawberry, and it was really good. It had a lot of fruity pulpy body, which you can see suspended in the liquid and sticking to the sides of the glass.
I found these two dark beers to take home for later. 😋
There was a sour with coconut on their tap list that sounded pretty good, so we shared one of these too. It was martian green! 😳 It was a little more sour than I like, but really refreshing. Our son liked the name of it and said he’d love to try it: “Jungo Joose Mowie Wowie” from the Brewing Projekt in Wisconsin. They make some good marshmallow sours that we really like so we got a crowler (32 oz can) to go to share with him.
It was getting late, and we needed some food, so my plan all along was to just go around the block to the other end of this same building for dinner at the Cove. They had a pretty big menu with everything from fresh seafood to burgers. We both enjoyed a really tasty dinner. It was an interesting place, advertised as a sports bar, and they did have TVs with a variety of games playing. But the music, decor, and feel was more like a trendy evening out kind of place. Kind of an interesting mix of style, but the food and service was really good.
I spied more flowers on our way back to the marina. ☺️
We had a pretty sunset, and you can just barely see the Olympic Mountains in the distance behind that big boat that was blocking our view. 😉
On Friday, we took a morning stroll up to the Farmer’s market. The tide was out, and this is what you get…. lots of muscles!! And you get to exercise your own muscles going up the ramp.
Ooooh – more flowers!!
We wandered through the market, and didn’t really find anything that we needed. The produce was limited pretty much to apples and asparagus. Well…. it IS too early in the year for much of anything else. There were flowers and soaps and crafts, with lots of colorful people selling. I had fixed us some breakfast, so neither of us were hungry, and although there were several bakeries with fresh baked goodies and bread, we didn’t buy a single thing.
Our oldest daughter came to visit after work, and we enjoyed her company for about four hours which was really nice. She was just at our house in Florida a couple of weeks ago, so we got to hear about her adventures there.
Another pretty sunset ended our day. Tomorrow we’ll head back to home port.
Awe, Saturday (May 20) morning was cloudy and cool, but we pulled our lines and headed out at about 9:00. We have a BBQ and beer date with our son tonight, so we needed to get on our way. Tootaloo, Olympia. Thank you for being cleaned up and nicer than we anticipated. 😉
We saw a few porpoise along our journey today. They are smaller and darker in color than the ones we have in Florida, and just as shy about getting their picture taken.
While we were tootling along, Kenny was fiddling with the VHF radio. It seems like we haven’t heard much on it the last few days, so we weren’t sure it was working properly. Today we did hear the USCG make an pon-pon announcement of a sailboat adrift in our area. We kept our eyes open, but didn’t see anything. After about an hour, the coast guard called us by name on the radio!! 😳. That is one of the features of Island Girl having AIS… we can be seen by others who also have AIS, so we cannot be stealth about our activities. When Kenny tried to reply, it was obvious that the Coasties couldn’t hear him, so he went downstairs to use our other radio. They asked us to keep an eye peeled for the sailboat since it was last reported right about where we were. After a few minutes, we heard another boat respond to the coast guard, that they found the boat, it was manned, and it was not in distress. Hmm… weird. Well, anyway, we figure that our microphone on the radio must not be working, because we receive transmissions just fine, and we can hear when the microphone is keyed up by listening on our other radio, but no voice comes through. We may have to get a new mic.
The sky was clearing up nicely, and the Olympic Mountains were beautiful! The water was calm and flat, and apparently there was some kind of fishing season open because there were lots of fisher-people!
We were moving along nicely with the outgoing tide until we rounded the point at Point Defiance when we slowed down with water going different directions. There were lots of people out enjoying the beach while the tide is out. The people are tiny specks of life on the left edge of the picture. It looked like two cave openings in the bluff wall, but I don’t know if that’s what is really there.
This was our journey today. Again, we had the excellent benefit of riding with the tide (the red lines). It was 39 miles to get home, at just over 4 hours. We got home just in time to join in to the annual Marina party, complete with catered BBQ and gift drawings. It was fun to visit with our neighbors and get some yummy food! And then we headed to our son’s house for more delicious smoked meat!
We have a busy week coming up, with more adventures in store! It actually will be a couple of busy months! It seems we’re booking ourselves with back to back adventures. Why not?!