We all may love living in this quirky city, but sometimes it’s good to just leave the urban environment. And during the summer, the entire swath of Western Washington feels like our playground.

On Monday, I went up to Port Townsend to visit a kick-ass, jazz-musician friend, who is an artist in residence for a week at this jazz festival. This is one of the better-kept secrets of the greater Seattle area. Some of the most formidable jazz musicians in the nation gather in old wooden buildings at Fort Worden and teach kids how to play. Walk around the grassy fields in the morning and you can hear fierce jazz bouncing from all the buildings. And during the week, combos of musicians huddle into fine dining establishments around town and burn through tunes together.

(When I spend time with my jazz friends, I start talking like them. They really do talk about “digging” something and refer to evenings together as “hang time.” KK often says of our time together, “That was a great hang.” And they really do close their eyes and exaggeratedly nod their heads in genuine appreciation of each other’s music.)

And Port Townsend has some of the finest dining establishments of any small town I’ve ever been in. In years past, I’ve closed my eyes in pleasure in Sentosa, and The Silverwater Cafe. At the first, I ate the most sensual sushi of my life, fresh and plunged in taste. Oh, and homemade ginger-cardamom ice cream. And last year, at the last, my friend and I shared lavender-pepper ahi tuna and gorgonzola fettucine. You would have laughed at the moans of pleasure. This year, we tried T’s Restaurant, a swanky Tuscan place with an open kitchen and wonderfully solicitous waitstaff. I have a recently discovered, dangerous food allergy, which makes eating in certain restaurants impossible. But the people at T’s were patient and informed, making my experience blissfully free of worry. On top of that, the food just rocked. Chicken saltimbocca with salty prosciutto. Caprese salad that arrived in a little stack of flavor. And blueberry panna cotta with locally grown blueberries. Yum.

And if you walk downtown during the day, yes, you’re going to see a sickening amount of frilly Victoriana in storefronts. However, Quimper Sound, on Water Street, is one of my favorite record stores in the world. Relaxed, aging hipsters with an exhaustive knowledge of music. Plus, half the store is vinyl, which I appreciate. My turntable may be broken at the moment, and most of my records in the closet, but I still prefer spacious vinyl to tinny cds. So do they.

So you should go sometime. In fact, the jazz musicians are playing through this weekend, so hop in the car and drive up to Edmonds (taking the Kingston ferry route instead of Bainbridge will save you valuable time)and ford into the great green wilds of the Olympic Peninsula for fiery food and burning tunes.