On a beautiful April Sunday, we drove 10 minutes from our Tacoma home and walked on to the new ferry on the Point Defiance to Vashon Island trip, Chetzemoka, just for the ride over and back. Chetzemoka is the first of the Kwa-di Tabil class ferries in the fleet. Originally assigned to the Port Townsend to Keystone route on November 2010, she was moved to Tacoma in October 2011.
For just 9 bucks, two people can ferry over and back and get out on the water for about an hour. At the end of your trip (back at Point Defiance) there are lots of options in this gem of a park.
Point Defiance Park is one of my favorite places for a run in my 23 years of running. There are 3 pretty well marked trails that take you through the beautiful urban forest for 3 to 4 miles, a long run for me. The allure of these trails is that you're never really sure exactly where you are, how far you've run or how far you are from the finish line, so for me the run goes by quickly. I like to start at the Pagoda and pick up the trails at the Rhododendron Garden just after the Zoo on the left side of the road on Five-Mile Drive. Thre is a pretty steep incline here for a short distance and after that it is all rolling terrain.
