Day 5: Port Townsend and Exploring Whidbey Island
Sunday, August 29, 2004

Today we headed over to Whidbey Island from Port Townsend on the peninsula and had a day full of fun exploring the island.

We got out early (for us) and for the last time got bagels from the Olympic Bagel Company, this time to go. The drive to Port Townsend took a little less than an hour. It rained part of the way, which reminded us how we'd gotten pretty lucky so far in not having it rain on us when we were out and about.

Port Townsend

We got to Port Townsend at around 10:35 for the 11:15 ferry and it seemed like it was about halfway full, so we were glad we'd given ourselves time. That gave us about a half hour to explore the town, which turned out to be a very nice little town with lots of shops. It was Sunday and still lots of places were open and people were out. I guess they make their living off the tourists so they are open on weekends. I wished we could have spent about 2 hours checking it out, but we had to make do with 30 minutes. We went into a nice artists coop and admired the work. I most liked the modern quilts and wasn't terribly impressed with the photography. Someday I'm guessing I'm going to try to do something with fabric — I keep being drawn to it.

Ferry loading dock

Walendo wanted to get back to the car early, but I kept on and checked out a few more places. There was a glass store and my eye was caught by a dangling blue glass thing with wire wrapped around it. Walendo likes glass things, so I figured I'd get it for him. The woman at the store was good about packaging it quickly when I mentioned I had to make the ferry, which I appreciated. I took a few snapshots of the downtown just to document it, and scurried back to the ferry. The whole town was only about 3 blocks long but every shop was full and in very nice shape, so it had a much nicer feel to it than Port Angeles. If it weren't so much further from the rest of the Olympic Peninsula, I'd prefer it as a place to stay, but doing so would require a lot more driving.

Boats in fog off Port Townsend docks

Meantime, there was a thin layer of fog just hovering over the water that made the scene look ethereal. I took a bunch of shots of the boats docked in the water appearing faintly through the fog with just the hint of the shore across the way. I'm hopeful that some of those might come out well. Some kayakers wandered by as we waited for the ferry to start loading, so I took a few of those, although the fog had started to lift by then. We'll see how those look.

The whole ferry process was very efficient. We loaded on quickly and they took off shortly after that. The trip took about a half hour, and I spent it up on the deck watching the scenery. I've been amazed that it hasn't been as cold as I keep expecting, so it was nice that I could stay outside the whole time. We docked into Keystone and unloaded again pretty quickly. Whidbey Island is a thin narrow strip of land that runs north-south for about 60 miles and is maybe 5 miles wide. Keystone is in the northern half of the island, and we'd booked a hotel in Freeland, in the southern half, called the Harbor Inn, so we headed south to check in.

Greenbank Farm

On the way, we passed the Greenbank Farm which was having a farmer's market, so we decided to stop and check it out. It was just a small collection of artists and food vendors, but it was nice to see. (It turns out it's only on Sundays from 11am-2pm, so we lucked out.) We bought some pluots from a stand that had four different varieties. Yum. There were a few buildings with a café, a wine tasting area, (which isn't for us), an antique store, and happily for me, a photo exhibit. A local photographer named Dan Karvasek sets up his images each week. He had some beautiful ones, mostly of Whidbey Island but a few from Montana. I chatted with him a bit and told him what I liked about a few images, and he said I'd selected some of his favorites. We later saw that his cards were for sale in quite a few places around the island, so I guess he's established himself as the Whidbey Island photographer. Good for him. I felt a little bad that I wasn't buying anything, but he offered me a plum for having a kind word, so that was nice.

Whenever we travel, Walendo and I check out license plates and see how many different ones we see. So I have to mention that while walking through the parking lot of Greenbank, we saw a Rhode Island. Wow! We almost never see them anywhere in the west, so it seemed pretty unlikely to come across one on this little island in the northwest corner of the state. We'd also seen a Hawaii at our hotel in Port Angeles, so it's been a good trip for license plates. (And Alaska's are so common they're practically pests up here!)

Harbour Inn	Walendo checking email outside hotel

We got to the Harbour Inn around 12:30pm, which was 2.5 hours before check-in time. Still, the woman at the desk (the owner?) said she could shuffle things to give us a room that was just being cleaned now, which was very nice of her. She was very friendly, and recommended a place for dinner when we asked, the Spitfire Grill. She even had a menu and it looked good, so we figured we'd go there. It's not a luxury hotel by any means, but the room was oversized and they had a fridge and real towels (none of those undersized and extra thin towels that we had at Super 8), and it even had extra outlets, a requirement for us. And the biggest bonus of all, they had wireless Internet. Within minutes, as we were waiting for our room to be ready, Walendo pulled out his little Zaurus computer and connected to the Internet, right there in the parking lot. Crazy. Anyway, it was a reasonable deal for $95 (including tax).

Langley

After dumping our stuff, we continued south to a little town called Langley, which is near the southern tip of the island. It's a small artsy town of about four streets in a square, so we wandered around, checking out the galleries, which were quite nice. The day had started out overcast, but it had started to clear and by now there was blue sky with some very pretty clouds — our first clear-ish weather of the trip so far — so it was very pleasant. The town was pretty busy with tourists meandering the streets, which gave it an active feel. There was a pizza place selling pizza-by-the-slice and it looked reasonable, so we decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be pretty decent — not as good as home but much better than any other pizza we'd had on this trip, so at least we can now say that it hasn't been a complete bust for pizza. We sat on a bench outside and munched away, overhearing a conversation between two older women who were discussing some person's life and quite enjoying themselves. It made me smile. There was an ice cream place, so I thought I'd give it a try, but for the second time this trip, they had no chocolate! I don't know if I can give this area my ice cream seal of approval!

We checked out a few more galleries and then decided to continue on. From this point, we headed north and retraced our steps back past Freeland and Greenbank and headed toward Coupeville, which is a little north of Keystone, where the ferry came in. Coupeville had about a one-block downtown but it too was busy with people visiting the shops. There was a nice art coop, but otherwise the art in this town was more of the touristy type. At the end of the street was a pier going out to a bright red building with a few more shops. It's called Ebey Landing and judging from the photos I'd seen of the island, it's a prominent landmark. There was also an ice cream place called Kapaws Iskreme, made by Karen Whelan, who calls herself an "ice cream artist," so I figured I'd give this area one more shot and, thankfully, they had chocolate. Not only that, but it was quite good, much better than Buzz's in Sequim. At last!

We continued on, passing through Oak Harbor, which seems to be the only "normal" town on the island in that it has all the stores that real people go to but wasn't much of a destination for tourists. We made our way up to the northern point of the island called Deception Pass, which is the main attraction on the island. I'd read that there was a narrow pass between the island and the mainland across the bridge and that because it was so narrow, the water surged through during the tide changes. It sounded pretty dramatic, so I wanted to see it. We headed into Deception Pass Park, paying a hefty $5 entry fee which seemed overpriced, especially considering that Olympic National Park was only $10. They said it was good at other parks in the area, so we interpreted that liberally when we were on San Juan Islands later in the week.

Kayakers paddling past the rocks at Rosario Beach

We drove to the West Beach parking area but it was much more crowded than we expected, so we tried the North Beach, which was a short (.2 mile) hike up to the bridge. We walked up to it and I was expecting to see some dramatic flow of water rushing through a small inlet but there was no such thing. The bridge connects Whidbey Island to a peninsula jutting out from the mainland and it is a very high bridge over a narrow stretch, but it wasn't especially dramatic. Maybe it happens only at the tide changes and it wasn't the right time of day for us. There were a lot of noisy people around, so we decided not to stick around. We were hoping to find a pretty, quiet place to sit and relax and read our books, and this wasn't it. Instead, we went to Rosario Beach on the north side of the bridge, which was a bit more off the beaten path. It had a picnic area and there were families having Sunday barbeques, but it was much less boisterous. The beach was covered in small round stones (perfect for skipping) and tons of drift wood logs, so we found a comfy flat log and settled in. The sky was mostly blue with some dramatic clouds, and there were some big rocks jutting out of the water. Boats passed by now and again, as did some kayakers. It was a nice scene.

We hung out there reading for a few hours, just what we both felt like doing. I finished my book, Moneyball, and was sad it was over. Pretty interesting reading. I was tempted to stay until sunset to get some nice photos, but there wasn't really enough foreground material to work with and, being about 45 minutes from the restaurant, we didn't want to risk it closing. So we packed up and headed back to Freeland. The Beachfire Grill (recommended by the hotel owner) turned out to be perfect. It's hidden away on a residential golf course, but they had delicious food. Walendo had an unusually good burger and I had a teriyaki salad with a delicious light dressing that was perfect, just what I felt like eating. The service was friendly but slow and inefficient, but since we weren't in any rush, we weren't too bothered by it.

We got back to the hotel around 9pm and now we're doing our thing, with me writing in the journal and uploading images. The one twist is that Walendo is checking mail via the wireless Internet, because he can. He's a happy man. Okay, I admit it, we both checked mail, and it was nice to do so from the comfort of our hotel and without worrying about how many minutes it was taking us. We wished we'd had a room like this for four days, instead of the Super 8.

Oh, and I gave Walendo his little glass gift and he was quite pleased with it. I think he liked it but liked even more that I got him something for no reason.

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