It was a great day for a rest day in Bremerton. We casually awoke around 9:00 am to the sun shining, which helped improve my first skewed impression of this small coastal city. We decided to take a walk to a small cafe called The Manette Daily which is just on the other side of the Manette Bridge. According to HappyCow, they offer tofu scramble and a few other vegan breakfast dishes. As much as I’d grown used to my regular camp breakfasts, I was looking forward to a nice cooked meal in the morning.
It was a beautiful walk across the bridge in the morning. We arrived at The Manette Daily right around opening time, which is 10:00am on the weekdays, and were told, sadly, that they only serve cooked breakfast on the weekends. This was disappointing news, but we passed another bakery on the way which was also on HappyCow and thought we’d try them and see what kind of vegan baked goods they had. We walked around the corner to Larry & Kristi’s Bakery and were told that they only have vegan donuts on Saturdays (apparently the weekend is the time to be in Bremerton). They did have a couple of vegan scones though, so we bought them and went down to a picnic table by the water and ate them there. They weren’t a proper substitution for the cooked breakfast I had my heart set on but they did the trick for the time being. After breakfast, we walked back over the Manette Bridge to take a look at another place on our HappyCow list called Hot Java Cafe. It’s a nice little coffee shop in the heart of what seems like downtown Bremerton. We ordered a couple of vegan muffins which were also gluten-free but neither Lauren or I were very impressed.
After our second breakfast, we decided to do something that didn’t involve eating and went over to Kitsap Historical Society and Museum to take in some local culture. The exhibits inside included quite a bit of history of the timber industry, and being a military town, a lot of Bremerton’s part in World War II. There was also a puppet museum upstairs which was pretty random but showcased some interesting, creepy, and racist puppets which made me feel more uncomfortable than anything.
Since the weather was nice and we didn’t have much else to do, we decided that we would spend some time geocaching around town today. We made our way through the downtown area finding some caches and eventually ended up at the library. According to our app, there was a cache which required us to decipher a code using facts about Martin Luther King Jr. If done correctly, it would lead us to the final location of the cache. We did the legwork while in the library and got the final coordinates… or so we thought. After several attempts of searching for the cache, including one that involved me asking someone at the YWCA if there was a geocache inside (the confused woman informed me that there wasn’t), we went back to the library to ask the librarian for help. Turns out it was in the library all along, in a book about MLK. Go figure.
After our library adventure, we decided to make our way back across the Manette Bridge to The Manette Daily to try out something for lunch. It was about 2:30 pm when we arrived and they closed at 3:00 pm (open late, close early seems par for the course in this town) so we knew it’d be a quick stop. We both ordered the mushroom dip which was their version of a French dip except, you guessed it, made with mushrooms. I like mushrooms as an accent but an entire sandwich made of mushrooms is a little much for me. I liked it but would probably try something different next time. The mid-afternoon heat was starting to set in so we decided to work our way back to the house to rest for a little while, of course, finding geocaches along the way.
Later in the evening after giving our legs a break and watching an episode of “Stranger Things,” we decided it was time to eat again. We picked a place called The Curry, which serves one of my favorite foods–curry. It’s an Indian restaurant which has all vegan dishes clearly labeled, a practice that I truly appreciate. Lauren and I split some dal, aloo mater, and some roti, all of which was delicious. We ventured back to the AirBnB for a little more “Stranger Things” and to relax before our final day of riding.
Today’s Mileage = 0
Total Mileage = 374.38
