‘Twenty years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the tradewinds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
We’ve been busy for the last few days and we’re going to finish it out with a fourth day of adventuring. First, to give us the strength to adventure, we decided to eat breakfast out in La Conner. I’ve never heard of La Conner before this trip and, even after I had made a reservation for out campground here, I really didn’t explore it much online. I knew that we wanted to take the Boeing tour from here and that we wanted to take the ferry to Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands from here but I had no other ideas.
Actually, La Conner is quite a tourist town. It has a nice river running through it which brings in lots of boats and not just little putt-putts, but bigger yachts.
There’s a beautiful bridge called the Rainbow Bridge for its graceful arch. You can eat on a deck overlooking the river.
There’s a marina here but many of the boats we’ve seen are those of people who have boated in, tied up at the pier and are spending a few days here. There area antique shops, clothing shops, jewelry shops, gift shops but, one thing we noticed, there are no real stores. We did not see a Walgreens, or a Safeway or a NAPA but, I’m sure, they exist - just not where we were.
Back to breakfast at Calico Cupboard, very nice. More than just the usual breakfast, they make their own 9-grain bread, they make their own jam, the potatoes are not just hash browns but flavored country red potatoes and the scramble was filled with veggies. The ambiance was delightful with townies mixed in with us tourists and we enjoyed it all.
Now we’re off for Deception Pass, a narrow waterway between Anacortes Island and Whidbey Island. It was named by Captain George Vancouver when he discovered that this waterway was not an inlet to a bay but actually a river flowing between two islands.
Originally there was a ferry which took cars between the two but this was sporadic at best and non-existent at worst. Patrons used to summon the ferry by hitting an old saw with a mallet. Fares were 50 cents for a car and driver and 75 cents for larger vehicles. The ferry was privately owned by Berte Olson, who, at only 5’ was not just the only female ferry owner and operator in Washington but also a force to be reckoned with. Here’s her ferry carrying one car across the water.
When the legislature passed a bridge bill unanimously, she single-handedly convinced the Governor to veto it. She fought a bridge tooth and nail. But, finally a bridge was built and her ferry went out of business shortly afterwards. Progress is cruel sometimes.
The bridge was built during the Great Depression at a cost of $420,000. Most of the physical labor was done by local out-of-work farmers although young Civilian conservation Corps enrollees also assisted with the approach routes, using dynamite to blast through the rock on both sides. Construction took 2 months and the bridge was dedicated on July 31, 1935. Actually, it should have been done a day earlier but when they lowered the final section, it didn’t fit. An engineer realized that the hot summer weather had caused the steel to expand. by 4 pm. the weather had cooled enough for the final piece to be inserted. Whew.
The bridge is a jaw dropping 180’ above the rushing water and 1487’ long and I’m sure most people just rush over it without a second thought. It’s really two bridges, both passing over deep gorges with rushing water underneath. There are boats continually racing beneath the bridges to get out to the strait. The bridge builders thoughtfully put walkways along both sides of the bridge with steps under the bridge to connect them. It’s such a busy thoroughfare that it would be difficult to dodge the traffic while crossing the road trying to walk the other side of the bridge.
Would you guess that we walked the bridge? Yep, both of them. What marvelous views out towards the Glacier Mountains on one side
and Mt. Baker in the Cascades on the other.
Clear blue water, piney islands dotting the waters, 4000 acres of old growth forest, puffy white clouds scudding across the sky - what more could you want? And everything was wonderful as long as you didn’t look down into the chasm below.
After we had crossed both sides, we took off up the trails to the top of Goose Rock. Woodsy trail with lots of ferns lining the banks. We were trying to get a glimpse of Mt Baker through the trees because this was one of those rare days when there were no clouds obscuring its peak. We took a short trail down closer to the water and go this view. Wow. What a view.
Then Gary saw an eagle ‘swimming’ in the water. Several days ago, I had been talking with Kathy, a friend of ours who lives on Whidbey Island and has a house overlooking the water. She sees eagles all the time and told us that she had just seen an eagle swoop down to get a fish, got its wings wet and had to swim to shore. Strangest thing: an eagle that swims. But not just swims - it does the butterfly. Well, maybe we should say it does the ‘eagle’. Fully immersed in water, lifting its wings forward, then into the water, pulling the water behind it and then lifting its wings again. A very strong swimmer and moving rapidly towards shore. My picture is very poor but it gives you an idea of what it was doing. That’s one determined eagle.
I didn’t know that eagles could swim until Kathy told us and now we’ve actually seen it.
We then hiked down, around the island and then through a neat tunnel built by the CCC.
Note how they are cutting the wood. The idea behind many of the work projects during the Great Depression was to employ people and not machinery. John was one of the CCC boys who also was very instrumental in building the Museum.
Then our walk continued over to the beach and then went to the other side of the bridge to see the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum and some of the buildings they built for the park.
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