Location
Whidbey Island is an island in Puget Sound about an hour north of Seattle. Because it is long and narrow (about 50 miles from Deception Pass to Possession Point), you're never far from a view of the water, with mountains in the background. To the west is Admiralty Inlet and the Olympic Mountains, to the east is Saratoga Passage and the Cascades, and to the south is Useless Bay and Puget Sound, with Mount Rainier towering over the Seattle skyline.
There are only three ways on to the island: the bridge over Deception Pass at the far north end, the Keystone ferry from Port Townsend to the terminal near Ebey's Landing, and the ferry from Mukilteo to Clinton. Since we live in Freeland on the south end of the island, we usually take the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry if we need to go off-island.
The Community
From just south of Oak Harbor, the most populated area, to the Clinton ferry dock (about 35 miles) there are no shopping malls, McDonalds, Wal-Marts, or Starbucks, only one movie theater (74 years old with 250 seats), and 5 stoplights. But since people in the Pacific Northwest need their coffee, there are several drive-thru coffee stands.
But even though south Whidbey Island is rural, it's not provincial, because the community is so eclectic. Often referred to as Puget Sound's largest artist's colony, South Whidbey is home to many artists, writers and musicians, old hippies who dropped here in the sixties and seventies, ex-military who were stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey in Oak Harbor and fell in love with the island, and small-scale farmers selling their produce at the local farmer's markets. The beautiful scenery also draws many tourists to the island, which becomes really obvious on summer weekends, when there can be 2-3 hour lines for the ferry.
We also have more than our fair share of Pacific Northwest characters. We frequently see a Utility Kilter at the Payless Grocery store, and Coupeville just hired a Goat Renter Guy to clean up the town park. We even have three of them living on the Farm - Dawn is a Marymoor Off-Leash Dog Lady, a Relentless Recycler, and an Urban Chicken Farmer (although no longer urban, she's definitely a chicken farmer). Ron, however, has sucessfully avoided becoming a Sandals and Socks Guy
And did we mention that Whidbey Island is the most dog-friendly place on the planet? It seems that every other car you see on the island has a dog (or two) riding shotgun, and the local off-leash park organization, FETCH, maintains 5 fantastic off-leash parks on the island, including an off-leash beach, a 13 acre forest with trails, and a 30 acre pasture, all completely fenced. Here is a video FETCH made to try and win money in a contest for renovating a park
