10/3 Fort Worden State Park Campground

I've been here at Fort Worden for a week, but just got all my photos organized and decided what I wanted to post was too long for a single post, so I am dividing it up into three posts.  So, this first post will focus on the campground area of this large state park.  

Fort Worden is a historical state park located in the far northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula in Northwestern Washington State.  Canada is to the north and ships enter Puget Sound from the Pacific Ocean and head to ports as far away as Seattle, as shown by this map.  The fort was constructed from 1898 to 1920, and was intended to defend Puget Sound against invaders.  I'll post more about this in a later post, but the important information is that the fort was purchased as a state park in 1957.

First, you need to know that this state park has two campgrounds.  There is one in the forest, up by the main fort buildings, and one below the bluff, down by the beach.  The campground by the beach has full hookups and paved sites, plus it has a much better view than the forest campground.  I stayed there once several years ago, but much prefer the beach, so there are pictures only of that campground posted here.  

This is my campsite.  Notice how dry the grass is here in the Pacific Northwest.  Because it is on a major body of water and about as far north as you can go in this part of the country, the weather is almost always chilly and windy.  Temps while I have been here have been in the 60s during the day, and as low as the upper 40s at night, so you need warm clothes here and lots of blankets unless you have a furnace as I do! 

 

You enter the campground after driving through the upper part of the fort containing most of the original buildings.  Then you drive down a long hill to the beach campground.  In this photo, the beach is to the right, there is a gun emplacement and lighthouse at the end of the road, and the campground is way down on the left. 

The beach is not as nice as the ones directly on the ocean, but the water is clean and very cold, of course!  This place was packed on the weekend.

This is the lighthouse in the distance.  It is placed where the Sound makes a bend and ships head to and from Seattle.  This includes a lot of cruise ships and also big container ships.

Instead of visiting the beach, if you continue down the main road, you will eventually bump into a series of gun emplacements that were constructed during WWI.  The bad thing is that these huge cement fortifications block the view of the Sound from the north end of the campground.

This photo shows the view from the top of one of the gun emplacements toward the campground. 

The areas underneath the top area are where they stored the guns, equipment, and ammunition. 

 

Lots of wild blackberries growing everywhere.  Unfortunately, the best ones are too high and too far back to get to. 

This view is looking west toward the Pacific and Canada in the distance.

Wind-swept trees next to the gun emplacements.

View of the gun emplacements from the north end of the campground.

 

 

My motorhome is just to the right of and behind the restroom building.

 

 

So, why did I take a photo of the dumpster??  Mainly because I was impressed with the recycling bins.  They were clearly labeled with the type of recyclables to be put in each.   

I go through a lot of plastic soft drink and milk bottles, so I get frustrated when a campground does not have a place to recycle them.  I don't toss them in that situation, so sometimes I have to wait several weeks to get rid of the stored bags I have stuck in various storage places in my rig.