Day 9
August 9th, 2004
Port Townsend, WA to Bow, WA

She Says

Still no signs of un-life. So ends our official tour of haunted hotels.

Of course, I hear that the Skagit Casino is built on burial grounds...

Breakfast was your typical muffins and juice contenintal.

The manager, Ron Myhre, was kind enough to let us look at and photograph pages from the 304 and 306 guest books. After checking out, we walked the hallways once more. Room service was kind enough to let us into rooms 302 and 304, but 306 was unavailable.

As we drove thru the neighborhood to get to the main street, we passed a deer sitting on a front lawn. I thought maybe it was a statue at first, but it moved. No meadow of woods near it. It was as if it lived there and decided to sit in the shade of the tree on the front lawn... It didn't even get up when we pulled back around to take its picture! It was neat.

Port Townsend has a nice little downtown section, but they also have a couple really nice victorians in that neighborhood.

We had to drive and get turned about to find Fort Worden. There is a neat structure called "Alexander's Castle" on the grounds. It was built for Alexander's scottish bride-to-be, but when he went to get her, he discovered she was married.

The man at the Guardhouse/gift shop was very helpful and gave us ferry pamplets, so I feel a bit more comfortable now about our upcomingtrip back to Seattle.

I got a few postcards and a map of the area for my dad. I got a wolfie pup (plush) for my Best Friend as well. She's not really a plush kinda person, but he's really cute. After, I went outside to feed the crows/ravens. They were cautiously watched as I ate and then threw things to the base of their trees. Eventually the 3 told their friends and soon I had 8 new friends.

We had to take a ferry from Port Townsend to Keystone. Nice views. The "Quinalt" which means "river with a lake in the middle" Hmmm, maybe Fremen is based on a native american language?

Driving thru Whidbey Island to the mainland brought a bit of suprise. It's much like south San Jose, but surrounded by evergreen hills instead of dead brown grass hills. It would be a nice place to live, being close to city, sea, and woods, if it weren't for the fact I'd probably freeze solid in the winter! I'm tired of looking at brown skies and brown hills at home. I can breathe much better since we left the bay area...

We're in Bow, WA. We were upgraded for free to a suite... and it is SWEET!!!

$95 and we have a jacuzzi, fireplace, 2 tvs, fridge, microwave, coffe maker and an outdoor deck!!! We took a wander about the casino and I played about $20.

The buffet seemed a better option than the food. The fine dining looked fine, but we didn't feel like spending another $70 for dinner again. Most "nice" restaurants serve a few things I will eat, but Bryan usually gets limited to Steak, Steak, or Steak. (He's also a lot pickier than I am about what he will eat.) You can only eat steak so many days in a row. Not to mention being able to afford it... $teak isn't cheap.

It's now after dinner, and Bryan is at the the Blackjack table. I pulled out my Blackberry to type up more trip notes and e-mail my mom, and I was told I can't use any electronics in the casino. I guess it makes sense... After all, slots are all nothing more than glorified computer chips now-a-days. Guess someone got an idea to hack one with a cell phone or a gameboy??? Hmmm...I suppose card counting programs can be put into a palm pilot...

Bryan lost $80 between video poker and the blackjack table. I lost $20 on quarter slots, but put another $20 in the nickel slot and got back $46.75. So I'm up almost a whole $7!

2 more things: The $8 fruit and cheese plate we got from room service is HUGE. (The look on the service boy's face was priceless when I answered the door in a towel!!! He smiled and looked like he might blush, except he turned his head away.)

And

Falling Down is not a terribly romantic movie.

He Says

Last "Haunted Hotel" and no hauntings. Gee, that wasn't predictable or anything. Pretty restful night. Hotel is nice, except for the room. We explored the hotel some more.

Kryis asked the manager if we could look at the journal's that at one time had been left in the rooms. They had to take them out becuase too many people were stealing them or ripping our pages as souvenirs. We took photographs of pages that talked about the hotels reputation of being haunted so that we could compile them onto our website. We took pictures of pages of journals from Thornewood also. Wish we would have thought about that earlier.

We explored the town some more, this time in the daylight. Some very nice victorian buildings, and a nice little downtown area.

We headed to Fort Worden State Park and explored a bit. It is apparantly where they filmed An Officer and a Gentleman and other movies set on military bases. There is a neat building called Alexander's Caslte on the grounds. Alexander built it for his Scottish bride to be, but when he went to Scotland to get her, apparantly she had already married someone else. The best laid plans and all.

After we left, I got a snack at McDonald's and then we went to the ferry dock. It was an interesting ride. There was an aircraft carrier that passed us at one point. I took a few pictures of it and a few pictures of what I thought might be Mount Ranier.

When we got to Skagit Valley Casino, I was not really that impressed. I had never been to an "Indian Casino" before, and I guess everything pales in comparisson to Las Vegas.

The coolest thing was that they upgraded us to a suite, complimentary, because we were on our honeymoon. The fact that it was the middle of the week probably did not hurt that either. The room was nice.

I did a really dumb thing playing video poker. I was up... WAY UP, and lost it all. Oh well. I played some blackjack and lost there too.

We went back up to the room and ordered a fruit tray from room serivce. It was a nice fruit tray for eight bucks from room service. We kept the crackers for the rest of the trip.

More information on Manresa Castle can be found here.