Another day of not having any responsibilities allowed us to go exploring again today. We decided to try a spin to Samish Island, a few miles west of our camping spot. On the way we passed through Bow and a dinky town called Edison which has some cafes and small restaurants that folks must like because there were plenty of prospective customers there.
We continued west until we got to Samish Island which appears to actually be a peninsula. It is a nice place with lots of second-growth timber and estates that extend right down to the water. Being from California, I am surprised each time I see where private owners here can own and fence a portion of the shoreline next to a public body of water. In my crybaby home state, the state owns the shoreline and everybody has access to all of it except the parts the Marine Corps owns at Camp Pendleton and the Navy owns at Point Loma in San Diego.
We returned back to Edison and turned north on WA-11. This road skirts Samish Bay and is very nice; it reminds us of coast roads through the redwoods although the trees aren’t nearly as those on Avenue of the Giants. There are rock bluffs along the east side of the road and dizzying precipices overlooking the Samish Bay portion of the Strait of Georgia on the west. There are very large cedar trees here.
We passed through an area called Chuckanut which is an Indian word meaning ugly condominium or big ostentatious house. Many big houses built on very steep terrain look out over the Strait. The streets here are pretty steep so not many folks can use their garages because they can’t get their cars into them.
We eventually made it to the city of Bellingham and, after only a short period of confusion about our route, continued northwest toward the Lummi Indian Reservation. The Lummi live on a very pretty peninsula that protects Bellingham Bay from the raging fury of the winter sea in the Strait. We took the perimeter road that skirts the water around the peninsula. The landscape is gorgeous but there are a bunch of folks living here on the rez that have retained everything they ever acquired in their life. They store this stuff in their front yards. Directly across from their places are million dollar views of the Bay, the Strait and the San Juan Islands on the horizon.
Just a bit offshore lies Lummi Island and you can catch a ferry there from the south end of the Lummi Nation’s peninsula. We were a bit late for this activity so we didn’t go. It looks very nice and if we return to this part of America we will give the Island a try.
We turned toward home from the Lummi Nation but stopped to get diesel before we left the rez. Diesel is much cheaper here than at spots off the rez.
We got a few photos that you can see if you click here