Westport, WA

Friday 8/17/2012

We decided to visit Westport, WA while staying in Ocean Shores.

Westport is across Grays Harbor from Ocean Shores. There use to be a ferry that you could take from Ocean Shores to Westport. The ferry ride took about 20 minutes. The drive in the car, from Ocean Shores around the harbor to Westport took 1 hour. Unfortunately that ferry went out of business because it became too expensive to keep the channel dregged.

Our first stop in Westport was the Grays Harbor Light Station.

Here are the hours that the Gray Harbor Light Station are open.

From the parking lot to the lighthouse there were several signs. This one tells us the lighthouse has 135 steps. I did 165 steps at the Astoria Column, so this should be a piece of cake!

Grays Harbor Light station stands at 107 feet tall, the tallest lighthouse in Washington and the third tallest on the west coast.

The visitor center and gift shop is located on the main floor of the lighthouse.

We had Mallery, so Joe went inside to look around.

Soon one of the lighthouse workers came out and said he would watch Mallery for me if I wanted to go inside to look around. I didn't climb the lighthouse because it cost $4 and the lighthouse was closing in 5 minutes also.

We headed down to the marina and downtown area instead. The Visitor Center told Joe he could find fresh seafood on Float 8.

We noticed a charter boat had just docked and the tourists were getting ready to desembark.

Most of them had their catch of the day.

Joe found the fresh seafood shack, but decided not to purchase anything that day.

An old boat on Float 8.

We drove up to the end of the town, passing this mural.

We were told there was a lookout tower at the end of the marina and town area.

View of Westport from ground level.

View of Westport at the top of the lookout tower. The tower only has 40 steps.

Close up of the ships and boats in Westport Marina.

Looking across the harbor to Ocean Shores.

Zoom in to the beach peninsula that sticks out into the harbor from Ocean Shores.

Homes along the coast of Ocean Shores.



If you are a birder, there were birds on a rocky island off the coast there.

View of beach and jetty from the tower.

A campground is located one block from the main st of the town and dock area.

The RV park is called, "Totem RV Park".

While driving around the marina, we found the Public Observation Platform.

 

Below the platform I found this picture of Grays Harbor, Westport and Ocean Shores.

Looking down from the platform we saw this purple star fish.

Two boats racing out from the platform.

We also saw red star fish, and

orange star fish.

As we continued to drive around Westport we drove past the backside of the Maritime Museum

We drove around the block to the front side of the Maritime Museum.

A whale skeleton was visible in a side building of the museum.

Out front of the museum we could see the walking dock that we were told was a great place to fish and crab from.

Now to find our way out there was the question though.

We walked up the boardwalk trying to remember which float we were told to get out there.

We walked out one float only to find it was not connected to the fishing dock.

 

At the charter office there was information on the biggest size of all the different fish caught so far this year.

We finally figured out that it was Float 20 next to the Public Observation Platform.

We start our walk on Float 20.

I talk to a guy who has just started to crab for the day, but he had not got any yet.

At the peak of the dock.

The dock goes out to a "T" then goes to the right for a long while. On the way back the guy I talked to earlier had caught a crab.

Our drive for the day was 93 miles. We would have loved to gone on one of the charter fishing boats, but you have to be there very early in the morning and it was just too far to drive. If we ever make it back this way, we will stay at the RV park in town and just walk to the boat in the morning.
We are now at Easton, WA. We arrived here on Wednesday. Easton is on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains off Hwy. 90.