It has been a very busy summer.

Tricia and her boys came down from Dillingham and spent nine days with us before heading down to Vancouver to visit the "other" grandparents. Kris came over from Port Orchard and spent the week with us also. This trip was to Fort Casey on Whidbey Island. The picture above is some kind of fungus that was growing on the walls of the fort. I thought it was pretty interesting looking.
One of the fun things about being at Ft. Casey is that there is always a good wind for kite flying.

Both Andrew and Ben got the kite up. It garnered a lot of attention from others on the grounds.

Cooper looking at us from under one of the huge guns that protects Puget Sound.
Tricia and Ben enjoying a little time together. It is kind of hard to get when you are not at home and everything is topsy turvy. Kris in the background reading.
Darius, Cooper and Olivia under the gun.
On the steps of one of the gun bays.
After we explored the fort, we went down to the beach and waited for the ferry so we could
ride it across to Port Townsend for dinner. One half hour ride, went to pizza and then back to Ft. Casey and home.
Cannyn, Cooper, Olivia and Darius.

From Wikipedia:

Fort Casey State Park is located on Whidbey Island in Washington state. Admiralty Inlet was considered so strategic to the defense of Puget Sound in the 1890s that three forts, Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island, and Fort Worden, were built at the entrance with huge guns creating a "Triangle of Fire" that could theoretically thwart any invasion attempt by sea. Fort Casey is now a 467 acres (1.89 km²) marine camping park. TheAdmiralty Head Lighthouse is located in the state park.

Construction on Fort Casey was started in 1897. Her big guns on disappearing carriages, which could be raised out of their protective emplacements so that the guns were exposed only long enough to fire, became active in 1901. Unfortunately, the fort's batteries became obsolete almost as soon as their construction was completed. The invention of the airplane in 1903, and the subsequent development of military aircraft made the fort vulnerable to air attack. In addition, the development of battleships designed with increasingly accurate weaponry transformed the static strategies of the nineteenth century into the more mobile attack systems of the twentieth century. Most of Fort Casey's guns and mortars were removed and sent to Europe and the Pacific during World War II, where they were mounted on railcars to serve as mobile heavy artillery.

In 1935, the Coast Artillery withdrew the station's battery assignments and placed it on inactive status. As World War II approached, military officials reactivated the station after making physical improvements to the aging frame-plaster construction.

The two 10-inch (25-cm) seacoast artillery guns on disappearing carriages at the fort were salvaged in the mid-1960's from their final active duty location atFort Wint on the U. S. Naval Base Subic Bay,^[1] and are scarred with the effects of the Japanese bombings in the Philippines at the opening of World War II. Two 3-inch (76-mm) rapid-fire guns from Fort Wint are also mounted at Fort Casey.^[2]