It’s always an adventure when we travel to different places. We’re always on the lookout for unique spots for coffee or lunch. While the hour long drive from Brinnon to Port Townsend doesn’t have a lot of dining options, one spot in particular is a must-stop burger joint called Fat Smitty’s. It isn’t your run-of-the-mill greasy spoon. There was no way we couldn’t get the namesake burger, and boy oh boy, it didn’t disappoint. It was as big as my head, and while I do enjoy a challenge, there was no finishing that thing, especially because it comes with some pretty decent fries, too! I’ve heard their milkshakes are really great, if you’re feeling crazy, that is! The gigantic Fat Smitty Burger isn’t the coolest thing about this place either. The walls are covered in dollar bills that people have written on and tacked up! At one point, these Towmads had their hash-tagged dollar bill on display, too! They clean the walls and ceilings from time-to-time and donate the money to charities.
Once we could finally roll ourselves out of the restaurant, we continued to make our way to our next destination, Fort Worden Historical State Park. We had been trying to get reservations at this park earlier in the summer but to no avail. I’m sure you’ve all been there. Most of the popular spots fill up fast! Thankfully, Harry found a super helpful website called Campnab. We had been making dinner one night a few weeks earlier when he got the text that a full hook-ups spot had opened up! Score! So we immediately booked our stay.
You might be wondering why this park was so exciting for us; multiple reasons, actually. It was crabbing season and Fort Worden is situated right on the Puget Sound – prime waters for catching some Dungees! It’s also said to be the state’s most haunted campground! It used to be a military base (also, all of you movie buffs might recognize it as the Aviation Officer Candidate School in the in the popular 1982 Richard Gere flick, An Officer and a Gentleman!), so you can only imagine the things that happened there back in those early days. We both love exploring places that are supposedly haunted or have a spooky tale to tell. In fact, we actually run another site, Spookt, where we are trying to make it easy for folks to discover and explore our haunted surroundings. Check it out, if you dare! Meandering through the abandoned batteries and the cemetery at the park definitely raised the hairs on the backs of our necks!
The crabbing season opened while we were there, and we wanted first dibs for a spot on the pier to toss our pots over. We did some digging and found the crabs really like fish carcasses and chicken feet, but we had no idea just how we were going to get our hands on things like that. Lucky for us, the local market had BOTH! So just before midnight, we gathered our pots and our bait and loaded them up. We walked down to the pier and threw our pots over the side, tied them off, and wished on a star that come morning, we’d be able to have a feast of crab for dinner that night.
Morning came and we excitedly went to pull up our bounties, only, I had no bounty. Actually, I had no pot! You read that right! I pulled up the end of the rope with no pot attached! The shock and disappointment were real, folks! Turns out, there was what appeared to be a design flaw in the rope, and thankfully, the pots will open up and let any crabs that were trapped out so they wouldn’t starve to death.
We had one more pot to pull. At this point, I’m crossing my fingers and toes and dreaming of flaky crab meat dipped in butter as Harry is pulling on the rope. We both start laughing as we see one tiny little crab trying to eat the chicken feet. In Washington State, both red rock and Dungeness crabs have minimum size requirements and this tiny fella wasn’t even close!
Since a crab boil was obviously not in our immediate future, we decided to go into town to see what restaurants were open for dinner. That wasn’t always an easy feat since Covid either closed places permanently or forced them to drastically change their hours.
After checking out the wharf and a few places with too long of a wait, we settled on Banana Leaf Thai Bistro. Unfortunately, they were understaffed (again due to Covid), so we couldn’t sit on the patio. We opted for a table inside and hoped for the best. The food was really good and the Prosecco was even better!
Towmad life sometimes means having to have an Amazon delivery to the campground registration office. We were in desperate need of wheel stop stabilizers and couldn’t seem to find any that would fit between our tires. Amazon to the rescue. These have worked great and the office didn’t mind at all that we had the delivery!
Rus loves just lounging around on the couch, but he really missed the cat condo that we had for him when we were living in a house. Thankfully, we were able to find a local pet store that had one small enough that would fit in the trailer without being in the way.
Chores are still a must when living on the road, but now we get to do laundry AND find breweries like Propolis Brewing and Pourhouse to hang out at between cycles!
Port Townsend has a ton of restaurants and bars. We really loved the oysters at Finistere and the vintage decor at Uptown Pub.
One restaurant/bar we tried to check out earlier in the week, Sirens Pub, had a line a mile long, but we did notice the sign saying they had karaoke. We spent the night on their back patio watching the moon rise on the water. I got to sing a couple of songs, and we got to dance! A couple even complimented us!
We had a ton of fun biking around the park and the city of Port Townsend. Fort Worden was definitely one of our favorite stays to date.
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