To the island: Seattle, Day 5 (9 July 2017)

Whenever we stay in a city for more than a few days we like to get out of it – even gorgeous cities like Seattle! This trip we plan two trips away from the city, with today’s excursion to Bainbridge Island being the first one.

We set off around 8.15 am on a walk that provided more views of Seattle’s interesting and varied skyline, and took us past more public art (including a Henry Moore sculpture, “Vertebrae”, 1971, outside the Library). The route was also seriously downhill, which did not augur well for the walk home at the end of the day! Despite this, we got to the terminal in such good time that we caught the ferry prior to the one we were aiming for, and consequently landed on Bainbridge Island soon after 9.30am. It was another glorious, glorious day.

An island by any other name

We’d been told that the main town on the island is Winslow. However, according to Wikipedia, Bainbridge Island is a city. It all happened in 1991 when Winslow incorporated and annexed the whole island, thereby creating the city of Bainbridge Island. Does this make Winslow a suburb of Bainbridge Island and its CBD?

Whatever it is, Bainbridge is a pretty little island in the gorgeous Puget Sound (which also contains the San Juan Islands where we stayed briefly with Evan and Hannah back in 1992.) It is a mere 30-minute ferry ride from Seattle, and is almost a suburb of that city given the people who commute between the two for work. 

The first white person to visit the island was explorer George Vancouver in 1792, though Native Americans had, of course, lived there for several thousand years before that. Its main industries from the mid-19th century were logging and shipbuilding, its cedar being excellent material for ship masts. 

That’s enough orientation, though. Let’s get onto what we did, which started with looking for a cafe, for our first cuppa of the day. We settled on Blackbird, where we also bought a GF lemon poppyseed muffin. I’m not a huge muffin fan, but this looked good, so we bought it and shared it – and it was delicious. (The Bainbridge Walkabout Guide said Blackbird did “scratch baking”, which clearly it did.)

We then pottered around town. We did part of the waterfront walk along which was a whimsical collection of stone sculptured figures engaging in all sorts of physical activity including several yoga poses. How fun. We want one or two for our newly landscaped front yard. And I popped into a couple of shops including the Eagle Harbour Book Co. What a bookshop. I was fascinated by the extensive display of information about and recommendations by book groups. They advertised three main book groups on the island, but they also had a display of books recommended by other book groups, such as the Quilting Stars recommending Aussie Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project, the Sugar Babies doing the same for A man called Ove, while Paul Beatty’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The sellout was labelled with that common bookclub cry, “Who picked this book”. I loved this bookshop’s sense of humour – and support for bookgroups.  

Being foodies

It will come as no surprise to most of you that we are self-confessed foodies. That doesn’t mean, however, that when we travel we look for the “best” gourmet restaurants. We look, rather, for interesting dining experiences – for local food, for the places that locals like (within reason…fast food outlets are not high on our agenda), for places in interesting or beautiful locations. It means we check out Starbucks in its hometown (as you know we did), that we try American diners (particularly in small country towns), and today, it meant that we chose to eat on the waterfront at Doc’s Waterfront Grill, which the abovementioned guide described as “food, drinks and FUN done right”. And it was so. The food was delicious – we both had the cedar-wrapped salmon which was moist and tasty, and was served with excellent veggies, fingerling (Kipfler) potatoes and broccolini. There was a fun vibe to the place, depending on your perspective I suppose, as they had a sign announcing a $5 fine for whining, and another that “unattended toddlers” would be “towed away at the owner’s expense”!

Nature can do without man, but

says Prentice Bloedel, man cannot do without nature.

Who is Prentice Bloedel you might be asking? I certainly would have, if I hadn’t been to Bloedel Reserve. We enjoyed our time on Bainbridge Island (or, as it’s a city, should we say “in” Bainbridge Island? I’m so confused!). However, it was Bloedel Reserve which took our enjoyment to another level. This place is beautiful. 

The property was bought by the Bloedels (Virginia and Prentice) in 1951. They both came from timber families, but Prentice was a naturalist at heart, the leaflet says, and he introduced several conservation measures in his business and elsewhere, making him an early “greenie”.

In retirement, he created the gardens that now form Bloedel Reserve. The leaflet says that he “was deeply interested in the relationship between people and the natural world, and the power of landscape to evoke emotions.” He understood the therapeutic value of nature, and funded research into “the psychological effect of time spent outdoors”. The reserve is truly beautiful, as you’ll see from the photos. In fact, I’ll say nothing more except that the reserve comprises many different gardens and environments (which flow seamlessly one to the other) and that we finally photographed some critters for Trudy!

Oh, and we walked, said Garmin, 15.5kms today.

Trivia of the day

Japanese immigrants first arrived on Bainbridge Island in 1883. Their descendants were the first Japanese-Americans to be interned during WW2. I wonder why they were so lucky!

Today’s images

Still

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Moving

Takako Satō playing the koto, Bloedel Reserve