Pirate days in WA, USA

It was at the staff breakfast, on the last day of school, that Erica mentioned that she was heading to a pirate festival and to go surfing, down in Westport, Washington. I thought that Bridget would like to hear about this, so when I got home, I checked out the details on the internet. The Rusty Scupper Pirate Daze was a 3 day festival with a parade on Sunday.

Westport is down on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsular, and we were going to Independence Day celebrations down at Poulsbo, on the Hood Canal on the 3rd of July, so this was in the same general direction.

We packed and left on Saturday morning, and as we crossed the border the Border Patrol officer was asking whether we had anything to declare, and who packed the car. I didn’t realize that Paula had packed three mandarins, and that he could see them, but I couldn’t. He said that, unless his eyes were deceiving him, there was fruit in the car and that it was a US$300 fine for making a false declaration. He kept our passports and directed us to get the car searched. We were told to leave the keys in the car and to go inside the Customs building. We were met by a female officer who asked what was in the car, and where it was. She put on gloves and went out to inspect the car. She opened the doors, and undid the straps and clips on the roof carrier to inspect. She found the fruit where we had said it was, but continued to inspect the rest of the car. When she came back in she said that the other border guard had said that I had not known the fruit was there, but that as the driver I was responsible. This time we would be let off with a warning. What a relief! We had been at the border for over an hour while this all unfolded, so we were finally glad when we could fix our load and be on our way.

We headed down I5 with all the other traffic towards Seattle. The closer we got the more the traffic. We continued past Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia, and aimed for Aberdeen and the coast beyond.

When we arrived in Westport, on Gray's Harbour, we had a quick look at the festival area and left Bridget and Daniel to explore the stalls while we looked for a campground. The American Sunset RV Park was just on the outskirts of the town and had a good camping area. We left the bikes there and went back to find the kids. It was around 6:00 pm and most of the stalls were closing, so we walked around the town and then went back to set up the tent and organize dinner.

On Sunday we got organised to head in to the festival area, and for the parade that was to happen at noon. Bridget got dressed in the pirate gear that she had, and we rode bikes in to town. It was sunny with a good breeze for sailing. We locked our bikes up and joined the rest of the pirates.