More exploring was on the schedule for today. This time, we decided to take a stab at the country south of La Conner. We drove from our campground on Snee Oosh Road into La Conner so Peggy could go to the Quilt & Textile Museum in town before we embarked on any distance driving. I’m almost completely unawares and uninterested in such things so I let her go in alone.
Peggy was out again in a remarkably short amount of time, particularly since all things cloth interest her and the museum is full of them. She returned to the truck with only a very small amount of cloth thingies she uses for something. I was very proud of her.
We then fired up the truck and crept around a few La Conner hillside streets admiring the residential architecture. There are an abundance of gorgeous little houses above the commercial part of town and many of them have a great view of this little seaport. Across a short expanse of water, we could hear the Indians on the rez on the other side that were pounding away on some big drums while having some sort of get together. It looked like everyone there was having a good time. On the La Conner side it was pretty quiet except for tourist noises.
We finally got on the road, heading south about 30 miles to the town of Stanwood. There we turned west on WA-532 for a loop drive of Camano Island, sandwiched between the Washington mainland and Whidbey Island. We were able to find our way around the north half of this beautiful island that has some farmland, great views of the Sound to both the east and the west, large sections of timber and stunning flowers everywhere.
At the south end of our loop, we took a short spin into two separate sections of Camano Island State Park which were very nice with some stands of old growth forest. As you drive the park’s steep and winding roads, you can look through the magnificent stands of trees and out over the blue waters of the Sound.
We then turned up the west coast of Camano Island, passing through not less than 6 places ending in “Beach”: Cama, Indian, Woodland, Rockaway, Sunset and Madrona before turning east across the top of the island and back to WA-532 and the road north toward home.
Peggy had a sudden fit of memory, remembering that our return route took us near a fruit and vegetable stand we had visited two years ago on our first trip to the Pacific Northwest. Amazingly, she was able to find the stand again despite it being on the far side of I-5. She has an uncanny knack for finding her way to such businesses and today was no exception. She supplemented our enormous horde at home such that we will probably have to go vegan to consume the fruits and veggies before they sprout hair.
Just when I thought we were done with today’s excursion, we remembered there was also a really good seafood market near La Conner TT Preserve named Black Rock Seafood we tried two years ago and Peggy hopped on the throttle to get us there before they closed at 6:00 PM. We got in under the wire and it only cost $70 for us to walk away with some sea bass, salmon, clam strips and mussels. Along with some very sweet corn from the veggie stand yesterday, half the clam strips and a pound of mussels were devoured at dinner tonight and they were superb. Black Rock is a place all seafood lovers should visit when passing through this part of the world. It is very close to WA-20 a few miles east of Anacortes.
There are some pix you can see from today’s explorations by clicking here