A clear schedule offered us an opportunity for aimless wandering today so we decided to take a spin around a nearby lake called Lake Whatcom. It is not What.com. We headed north toward the lake which is located southeast of Bellingham. We skirted the west shore of the lake for about 10 or 15 miles until we came to an area near the town of Geneva.
The state must have sold the land right down to the edge of the lake because people have purchased little slivers of land between the lake and the road. These slivers are all fenced from right down at the water line on one edge all the way around between the sliver and the highway and back to the water line on the other side. They are very tiny; I don’t think any of them are bigger than 1,000 square feet and most are smaller. They can’t build houses or even garages on the slivers but they can barbecue, set up outdoor furniture and wade out to their boats in the lake. Some of the spots have mini-sheds of about 40 square feet for some purpose other than habitation. Maybe they should call it Lake Whatzat? There is no waterfront public access to the lake and even if there was, there would be no parking. I am not sure having private ownership of public lake shoreline is a real good idea.
We drove around the north end and continued down the east side of Lake Whatcom. We finally ended up in the town of Sedro-Woolley (no kidding) which is a very nice little village with some gorgeous residential architecture. We wandered around the back streets for a while, admiring the beautiful houses until we started to see the same eagle-eyed local drivers for the second time which worried us may soon involve a long conversation with a local cop. We skedaddled and headed back to our RV spot near Bow.
All the roads we drove up the west side and down the east side of the lake pass through beautiful territory with large expanses of healthy standing timber. There are some great lake views although finding a place to stop and look is a bit problematic since there are no pullouts nor parking areas along the roads due to private ownership.
During our drive we shot some pix and you can see some of them if you click here