The Edmonds-Kingston ferry brings cars and pedestrians from the mainland to Kitsap Peninsula and back. It’s $10.70 if your vehicle is under 14′ in length, $13.55 for under 22′, and it goes up from there the longer your vehicle is. Ferry capacity is limited by total length of vehicles loaded, much more than total mass.
On Saturday we made a quick day trip to Paul’s getaway cabin on Kitsap peninsula. We drove up to Edmonds, and took the ferry to Kingston. At Edmonds we just missed the 10.30 am departure of the ferry, and walked over to the water’s edge while waiting for the next departure. Immediately to the north of the ferry terminal is Edmonds Underwater Park : an area of seabed stretched across 27 acres of tide and bottom lands. The park was established in 1970 as a marine preserve and sanctuary by city ordinance. The primary attraction for divers is the man-made reefs constructed of concrete blocks, tractor tires, PVC pipes of various sizes, sunken navigation buoys, an old tree trunk, sunken boats & ships, even old pieces of the 520 floating bridge. There were 20 or so divers to be seen on Saturday. It looked deceptively calm and shallow to me, given that a diver died in there 2005 and two more in 2010 in separate incidents. (Malfunctioning equipment, cross currents). Events like these send shock waves through the diving community, since there are so many diving protocols dedicated to safety – but I guess accidents are bound to happen with some 25,000 divers going there every year.
The divers are not supposed to go closer than 300 ft to the ferry terminal (that’s the Edmonds ferry terminal on the left). I think these guys are just checking their equipment, since all the other divers that went down into the water were over a little further to the right, with a breakwater separating them from the ferry terminal.The life cycle of a crab from a tile in a wall by the waterside. It could have come straight out of a high school biology book!Since I did not go into the water myself with scuba gear and a GoPro head-mounted underwater camera, I will have to make do with this artist’s rendition of what it looks like on the seabed of the underwater park. This is from a sign at the waterside. There are maps available as well, but some of the items on the floor bed shift around with the tides, so the map is not very reliable.
Kingston is on the north of Kitsap Peninsula, and they welcome visitors (that bring money, of course).I snapped this picture of kayakers from Paul’s deck at his cabin just before we headed back.
