erik lundegaard

Sunday August 01, 2021

The Pictographs of Hood Canal

This weekend, my wife and I took the Bremerton ferry over to Hood Canal—which is not a canal—to spend time with her family in Union, Wash. Saturday, the bunch of us went over to Potlatch State Park, where, after walking north along the beach until I hit a rivulet separating the public from the private, I came across a sign extolling the various types of salmon in the area: chinook, pink, steelhead, chum (they got rooked in the name game), sockeye, coho and cutthroat. And on the reverse of that sign? A warning against eating raw shellfish, with a pretty funny pictograph:

Later, we went up to Hoodsport to visit our two must-visit places in the area: Hoodsport Coffee Co., and their Olympic Mountain ice cream; and The Hardware Distillery, which makes great whiskey, vodka, gin, aqua vite, and assorted spirits. It was our first time back to either place since before the pandemic. We visited the coffee/ice cream place first (they were serving people outside rather than indoors, which I was glad to see as the pandemic ratchets up again), but we had to wait around for the distillery to open at noon. While waiting, we visited, among other places, the local library across Higway 101, where I came across yet another odd pictograph—this one a warning against slippery steps. I've seen slipping pictographs before, but never where the guy looked like he might be Gene Kelly or Ben Vereen clicking his heels.

No feet but look at those fingers. 

Oh, right. In my Potlatch beachwalk, over the barnacled rocks along the shore, I also came across this googly-eyed guy, which looks like something God made in arts and crafts class:

I think I'm just two or three Hood Canal pictographs shy of my own movie rating system: from Ben Vereen (4 stars!) to Vibrio Bacteria (looking at you, Zack Snyder).

Posted at 02:19 PM on Sunday August 01, 2021 in category Travels  
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