Fort Ebey – Whidbey Island (2)

When I tell people how long we spend on the road camping in the summers, one of the first questions I get is: “Together?” The next question is often: “How do you do laundry?” What people rarely ask, but should, is: “How do you defrost the freezer?” Question one is kind of why we do this, and we took care of questions two and three on this stop. After about a month, the little freezer in our battery run mini fridge gets crusted over with enough ice that it is hard to get the ice trays in and out. To defrost it, you have to turn it off and wait about an hour. It’s good to time that so you don’t have a lot of things that will go bad, and since we were down an uncooked chicken breast after the border crossing, and generally depleted on fridge food, this was a good time. We had targeted a Safeway in Bellingham, WA as a replenish stop and verified online that it had Chobani yogurts in stock. Richard has a Chobani every day and really prefers those over what is available in Canada. We stocked exactly enough Chobanis for the duration of our entire Canadian stay, relinquishing some fridge space normally designated for bread, in order to fit them all. I needed to blog, so I sat in Dory while things melted and Richard went and found a little pond trail to walk on. We stored whatever was cold in an insulated foldable box thing and put a bag of ice inside. It works pretty well, although we did later decide to ditch the frozen shrimp that had not stayed frozen. After everything was wiped down, we turned the fridge back on and filled it all to proper traveling capacity with a nice shopping trip. There is also a Trader Joe’s just down the road, so we got our preferred string cheese again, and some familiar salads for dinner.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived at the campground and got unhitched. It’s a very nice campground and I got a super nice pull through site. One of the things we were looking forward to, besides seeing my life long friend, is getting all of the things I ordered online and sent to her house during the trip. Included was a replacement power plug for Dory’s backup camera. Somehow it lost a piece on the pluggy part, but happily, that is something you can order. I did pretty well backing into sites without it, and this site turned out to be a pull through, so I didn’t even need it. It will be nice to have it back though. I also got an expensive thumb brace. I am happy to report that it has been really helpful and I am finally feeling like my hands are returning to normal. Usually, the “gold standard” expensive equipment is the way to go when you’re talking about injury supports, so I’m glad I got this thing. It has been about a six week recovery period and I wonder if that would have gone faster if I’d splurged sooner.

We headed over to Anne’s right away and she was generous enough to offer the use of her washer and dryer without even being asked. She’s super awesome that way. She lives in an adorable house in Coupeville, which is centrally located on Whidbey Island and just a ten minute drive from the campground. We chatted and got caught up while whites were washing and made plans for the next day.

The next day was dedicated to doing touristy things around town. Coupeville is an extremely picturesque historic town, featured actually in the movie “Practical Magic.” There are cute shops, a bakery (which sadly is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays), a few restaurants, and a great ice cream place. Richard walked over from the campground and met me downtown. We then went to Anne’s where she drove us out to a gorgeous bluff trail and historic site.

As is common with most early settler historic sites, many of the surviving (or replicated) buildings, have to do with fortifying against attacks from the native people whose land was being taken. There are four block houses on the island, which are sort of like log cabin keeps. There are also some historic houses and informational kiosks located in Ebey’s Landing State Park. We got in a lovely hike up the bluffs to a viewpoint where you can see all the way to Olympic National Park. Off in the distance, you can just make out Vancover Island, and on a clear day, Anne says you can sometimes see Mount Rainier. Great trail with access to the beach if you either walk or park down below.

Post hike, it was time for ice cream. You normally get three small scoops unless you are under ten or over fifty. If you meet the age requirement, you can ask for a single scoop. And while we met the age requirement, we were not going to shortchange ourselves and commit to only one flavor. I got mint chip, coffee almond fudge, and huckleberry cheesecake on a waffle cone. This place is in the top tier of ice cream places and worth any size line. We happened to be there on a slow day, but would have waited a good long time if need be.

After hanging out and doing a load of colors, we walked downtown and grabbed dinner at Molka Xete. This is a Mexican restaurant with an interesting menu. You can get five tacos with different meat fillings, but we went with something called a Sincronizada, which is two flour tortillas filled with your choice of meat, beans, cheese, guacamole, and cilantro. It was really good! The chips appeared to be freshly made too, which is always fun.

The next day we all drove town to the town of Langley. This is a larger town that is sort of the main tourist destination on the island. People come for day trips from Seattle and often end up in this town. It’s hip and proudly progressive, with signs of protest in most of the storefront windows. That was nice to see. There is a cool glass blowing shop, where you can blow your own small glass things or purchase any of the incredibly beautiful creations. I was tempted by the garden decorations in swirls of blue or green, but couldn’t imagine how I could get anything home.

Our obligatory food investigations included a hot slice of pepperoni from Village Pizza, a slice of Marrionberry pie from Whidbey Pies, and some chocolate covered marshmallows on a stick from Sweet Mona’s Chocolate Boutique. Whidbey Pies supplies a variety of pies for the whole island and their only storefront is in Langley. The filling was amazing and the crust nice and crisp.

We let Anne get back to her busy new job and we checked out South Whidbey State Park. This place was a campground, and in fact, we really thought it was still a campground. There is a dump there and we’ve contemplated using it, but we’ve also contemplated staying there, which you for sure can’t. It’s kind of a ghost campground where you can see where all the infrastructure is, like an entry kiosk, water spigots long since shut off, and evidence of campsites, even ones with hookups, being slowly reclaimed by nature. We were super curious as to why this nice campground got closed. A passing ranger answered the question by explaining that a tree fell and killed a visitor back in 2012. A study was done to determine whether it was safe to keep allowing overnight camping and it turned out many of the trees were diseased and it would be too impactful to remove all of them. So they closed the park to camping, but kept it open for day use. And left the dump station.

There are some nice trails in the park, one called the Hobbit Trail. They have some viewpoints of the water in a couple of spots, but are mostly forest walks. There is a trail that used to go down to the beach, but the stairs got washed away and they are not planning to replace them. You could scramble, at your own risk, but we were fine stopping at the big red hazard sign. If you combine all of the out and backs, the Discovery Loop, and a visit to a huge 500 year old Cedar, it’s around two and a half miles. It’s a shame you can’t still camp there, but I guess that’s better than getting squished by a tree.

We had another really lovely visit with Anne on a beautiful island. She has made such a nice home for herself in such a perfect location. The weather is always nice on the island and there is plenty to do to entertain guests. We were thinking about what we would do to entertain guests at our place, and besides a super cool backyard campground and slushies to offer, we would pretty much suggest a BART ride into San Francisco. We have a nice bike path and a lovely reservoir, but living in a tourist destination would be pretty cool. Well done Anne. So fun to see you every couple of years. Please come visit let us make you slushies. You are, of course, most welcome to use our laundry facilities.

Total miles from Vancouver: 125.9, 16.2 mpg, 7 hours 25 min (with border crossing and stop at Safeway to defrost freezer). Site 43 no hookups. Ok cell for both in site. No dump, no solar. Nice bluff trail around campground.