There were 3 decommissioned aircraft carriers in the port. One was the famous Kitty Hawk, which you can see poking over the top of this ship; this one has the name painted out, I think. I found a website that says the Independence and the Constellation also are tied up in Bremerton - don't know which this might be.
In this photo, I'm leaving town on a four-lane divided highway. Not pleasant, but pretty good shoulders, so it felt safe. That only lasted about 5 miles before I got onto much quieter roads.
One of my hobbies is collecting useless quotation marks -- got some here, at Belfair State Park.
Most of the first 30 miles or so were like this -- gentle highway, close to flat, along the Hood Canal. Not many people around -- once I got 15 miles or so outside of Bremerton, I think a lot of these are 2nd homes and vacation cottages.
"You're not from around here, are you?"
This was mounted on a house:
At the tip of the peninsula, one arrives at Tahuya. This is the mouth of the Tahuya River -- big flat marshes and mudflats.
I then headed inland, on really, really quiet roads climbing up the interior of the peninsula. A lot of chipseal roads, but blissfully free of traffic.
Got into some rolling hills -- some were pretty steep. The interesting thing about riding in the "lowlands" around Puget Sound -- the islands and peninsula -- is that there are no really big mountains to climb but frequently lots of rollers, some of which can be quite steep. This ride had a couple of climbs that were a few miles long, and a few steep hills, but overall it wasn't a killer.
After some climbing, and wicked-fast descent, I ended up on the north side of the peninsula, at a place called Dewatto Bay.
There was an old concrete building (abandoned restaurant?), where evidently kids hang out and party. Got this apocalyptic shot of my bike:
Most of the peninsula was second-growth forest (all the old growth timber was cut down years ago), interspersed with new clear-cut areas. From what I understand, when hillsides like this are clear-cut to this extent, the mud, silt and dirt runs off an clogs the nearby stream, putting a real dent in the wild salmon population. I recently read the the classic book on the decline of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, called "Mountain in the Clouds:"
http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Cloud...7521697&sr=8-1
(edit: I read after I got home that wild salmon are now extinct in the Tahuya River; there's a group trying to restore salmon to the habitat by transplanting eggs from the nearby Union River:
http://www.hcseg.org/x103.xml )