A fartweasle, no train, and Whidby Island in late summer

I have been away from the office (physically, at least, if not sufficiently electronically) for this past week, so no regular morning commute and therefore no regular morning iMood blog post. M and I were supposed to hop the rail down to Portland for a few days of haunting Powell's City of Books, good food, and relaxed downtime, but I came down seriously sick Sunday evening and didn't emerge until Tuesday morning. Still not sure if it was food poisoning or a quick and hard virus. Either way, to borrow a phrase recently twittered by Stephen Fry, it was a real fartweasle of a whatever it was.

So the salvage-the-rest-of-the-week-off plan, and a fine plan it was, was to take advantage of the forecast blue skies for one of our favorite half-day top-down local drives: up to Deception Pass, down the length of Whidbey Island to Coupeville, lunch at the Knead and Feed, and jump off the Southern end of the island via the Mukilteo ferry and from there home again.

The weather was perfect. One of those late summer mid-seventies days, blue skies with occasional high strafes of white cotton-fluff stretched out thin, a light salty marine breeze, and sunscreen required.

We grabbed coffee on our way out of town and then stopped at the Deception Pass bridge to stare out over the Sound, watch the boats pass under us, and tried to fathom the sheer heights and distances of the place. Here's circumstantial proof we were there:




From there it was rolling through the hills and woods of Whidbey until we reached Coopeville, a kitchy little historic town at the island's edge. We had lunch at a favorite tiny restaurant, the Knead and Feed


, known for their homemade breads, sandwiches, and soups. Also for their extravagantly delicious sweet rolls (3 orange rolls came home with us for post-dinner desert tonight!).

We walked the boardwalk and pier and watched an old wooden ship sail in across a glowing Mt. Baker and tie up. Then back to the Miata for the rest of the drive down to the ferry terminal. Traffic was light and reasonable, apart from one maroon Toyota SUV (whose license plate frame declared the driver to be a member of the Fairwood Country Club - wherever that is) that rode our rear bumper (as we clipped along at the full posted speed limit behind a handful of other cars) until he could fly past us in angry frustration. I watched him treat several the vehicles to the same behavior. In the end, though, we were right behind him at several lighted intersections and ended up getting on and off the ferry ahead of him (maybe this is a better use of Stephen Fry's wonderful fartweasle phrase).

A ferry was just docking as we got to the terminal, so we had very little wait, and it is a short run from there back to the mainland.

For a week that started off on a disappointing note, today redeemed it. Nothing could be finer that a beautiful day like today with my beloved. Here are a couple more pics, for further proof:









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