RO and I took a day trip to Westport. Westport is probably the nearest place to Seattle that is on the ocean proper. As such it gets a good chunk of tourist activity in the form of day trippers from Seattle.

What do I mean by "the ocean proper?" I mean that, while Seattle is on Puget Sound which is a large body of salt water, you can still see across it. The Puget Sound feels like a large lake. Which is nothing special for an in-lander like me.

The ocean proper means that I can look out over the water and see nothing but ocean on to the horizon. Although I've lived in Seattle for over ten years now. I still thrill when I see the ocean. I still feel compelled to touch its waters. The Pacific's waters are infinite. Seattle's are merely salty.

It's a two hour drive to Westport. The drive wasn't terribly scenic, but the traffic was fast. Westport is very small. Even though we didn't have a map and did no planning on where to go and what to see, the only difficulty we would run into was finding restrooms.

Westport; it's not a happy place. We felt a twinge of disappointment as we drove down along the waterfront. Many buildings are for sale. Others in disrepair. The cars parked along the street are older and rusting. We drove past a burt down restaurant.

After circleing around a few blocks and arguing about parking we got out and went for a walk. Despite the empty buildings, there are no shortage of gift shops and gallaries in Westport. We walk through a few of them. There are all so the same. T-shirts with funny slogans on them. Plastic danglies that clitter in the sun.

The kite store no longer sells kites.

The gallaries sell the the usual metal cut outs, hand made jewelry and paintings of pastoral scenes.

Why is every gift shop and gallery in America so similar? If there is one place where a small town can show off its locol color, it's at it's own gift shops and gallaries. Yet every small town gift shop and gallery I have ever been in looks like they order their products from the same catalog. "Funny saying shirts with your town name only $9.99 each. Metal artist who cuts fish out of steel $500.00 plus food and lodging. Buy one and get a hand-made-jewelry artist for free."

People worry that corporations and globalization are making us all so similar and creating a single global culture. I think the problem is deeper than that. Left to our own devices we learn from and become like the people around us. It's the communication and not the corporation. We see how other people live and work and instead of finding our own solution we think "Hey! I can do that." What's left is a world were originality is the exception. Where the tried and proven path is used over and over without asking "Is this too much?"

We came upon two baby seals as we walked along the ocean. No mother seal was around. I worried that they had been abandoned or their mother died. My worry was premature. Shortly a ranger came along and posted signs to stay away from the seals. He told us that mother seals often leave their babies on beaches while they go out hunting.

After our walk, we picked up some salmon and oysters at a local fish monger. It was all very fresh.

On the way home we stopped off at Aberdeen, the birth place of Kurt Cobain. This city too is not aging well. Stores are closing. Building are empty.

An antique store in Aberdeen has a Kurt Cobain department. Right next to the primitives and the nautical section.

Anacortes has a walk of fame, complete with stars in the sidewalk. The stars are each at leash 50 feet apart. On the list there is an NFL player, Gentle Ben author Walt Morey (though Wikipedia claims he's from neighboring Hoquiam) and silk screen artist. At that point we got back to where we parked our truck. Rather than learning the rest of the Aberdeen glitterati, we continued our trip home.

The oysters and salmon were amazingly fresh and tasty.