OLD & IMPORTANT
Lakewood Gardens
Structured Beauty
Bask in Greenery
Lakewold Gardens
This estate south of Tacoma passed through many wealthy hands before it was owned by a high-society matron named Eulalie Wagner. The rare rhododendrons and Japanese maples date to her collaboration with landscape architect Thomas Church, legendary for shaping much of California’s tony exteriors. Wagner’s Georgian-style mansion is open to visitors, but to see vintage photographs tracing the area’s transformation from cow-spotted prairie to city, visit the nearby Lakewood History Museum (253-682-3480; lakewoodhistorical.org). 253-584-4106; lakewoldgardens.org
Getting There 45 minutes: south on I-5
Turn Back Time
Fort Nisqually
Based on the Hudson Bay Company’s trading outpost from 1855, Fort Nisqually offers historically accurate buildings, period-appropriate clothing for museum “residents,” and activities—including an October candlelight tour and ghost stories around a bonfire—allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the first European settlement on Puget Sound. 253-591-5339; metroparkstacoma.org
Getting There 50 minutes: south on I-5 and WA 163
Dote on Design
Bloedel Reserve
More than 150 acres of greenery dwarf the English manor on the Bainbridge Island estate, even if the timber magnate who built it did decorate with fancy Louis XVI furniture and crystal chandeliers. Outside a ’60s-era guesthouse the landscape is inspired more by Japanese gardens than fussy flower beds. Austere Emily Brontë gets a poem engraved on a slate marker on the grounds, but don’t expect anything about UW poet Theodore Roethke, who drowned in a swimming pool on the property; the site is now a rock garden. 206-842-7631; bloedelreserve.org
Getting There 50 minutes: west on Seattle–Bainbridge ferry and north on WA 305
Fight Old Battles
Fort Ward State Park
Like most of the state’s old coastal military installations, this decommissioned fort on Bainbridge Island’s southernmost toe is home to old cannons, mossy battery structures, and (probably) a handful of ghosts. Clam diggers mine the rocky shore and scuba divers venture beyond into the waters of Rich Passage. The site was a top-secret World War II naval radio post, eavesdropping on Japanese communications. biparks.org/parksandfacilities/pkftward.html
Getting There 55 minutes: west on Seattle–Bainbridge ferry and south on Blakely Ave and Fort Ward Hill Rd
Set Sail
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard
The U.S. Navy tosses all its mothballed old aircraft carriers in the waters of Bremerton (someone call Hoarders), but the naval base is no junkyard. A massive old crane hangs over a still-active ship maintenance area, and nearby the Puget Sound Navy Museum recreates life on a nuclear aircraft carrier. On the way home, swing by the Naval Undersea Museum (www.history.navy.mil/museums/keyport/index1.htm) 12 miles north in Keyport to see torpedo tubes and the control room of a fast attack submarine. 360-476-3711; www.navsea.navy.mil/shipyards/puget
Getting There 70 minutes: west on Seattle-Bremerton ferry and WA 302
Try This Town: Port Gamble
When the company town was constructed on the northern point of the Kitsap Peninsula, it was meant to evoke the coast of Maine, home to the two founders of the Puget Mill Company. Ergo, the delicate Victorian porches, modest gray church, and village green scream old-timey New England. In the center of town, the Port Gamble Museum (360-297-8078) has all the charm of a fancy parlor, displaying sepia-toned photographs and old lace parasols that evoke the area’s past. Antique stores line the main drag, where lunch with a side of hand-dipped milkshake is served at Port Gamble General Store (360-297-7636). Regular ghost tours—plus a whole ghost conference every October—make use of the gothic architecture, and Civil War buffs reenact battles among the nineteenth-century buildings (never mind that the Confederacy obviously never camped within five states of here).
Ten miles south, history gets a little more local with Chief Seattle’s newly renovated grave and the Suquamish Museum and Cultural Center (360-394-8496).
Getting There
70 minutes:
west on Seattle–Bainbridge ferry,
and north on 305, 307 and 104
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