San Juan Sojourn - Day 1

Kirk House, the 100 year-old home, now a B&B we stayed at while on San Juan Island















The Madrona Grill at Roche Harbor where we ate Friday for Lunch















A sailboat passing by the ferry (where we wished we were)


A birdbath crafted by our hostess, Debbie -- this is now in our front yard :-)

The Hotel deHaro in Roche Harbor at the NW corner of San Juan Island

We like to get up to the San Juan Islands at least once a year. We can see them in the distance from North Beach, which is less than a mile from our home. Every time I look out to the distance I yearn to be there instead of here. Last year we visited Orcas Island with a brief stopover at Lopez Island. This year we decided to go to the more populated San Juan Island.

Getting there was fairly easy. We took the 8:00 AM ferry - we left the house at 7:20 to be there by 7:30. The ferry took us over to Whidbey Island and we drove up the island and across the Deception Pass Bridge to Anacortes to the ferry dock there in record time, arriving there by 9:30 for our 11:00 ferry which got us in Friday Harbor by noon. The sun was shining and we were so glad to have a nice weekend. Since there were a lot of walk-on passengers we knew the restaurants in town were going to busy and since we couldn’t check into our B&B until 3PM, we decided to drive up to Roche Harbor to have lunch.

We enjoyed a fine lunch overlooking the marina, then walked around the beautiful Roche Harbor resort. Soon it was just about time for us to return to Friday Harbor to check in to our B&B, the lovely Kirk House , a 1907 Craftsman home. Our room was the “Trellis Room” and we couldn’t have been more pleased with our accommodations. Our gracious hostess, Debbie showed us around the lovely home and grounds and even provided us with an afternoon snack. The big king-sized bed was just too inviting and we decided to take a bit of a nap before embarking on a bit of a shopping trip in town.

One of my goals for this trip was to visit all four bookstores in the little town of Friday Harbor. I am proud to say I met my goal. I bought books in three of the stores. My favorite of the three was Griffin Bay Bookstore , a wonderful little store that has all the bestsellers and is a member of Booksense. This store also has a little coffee shop. It also has the good sense to be open until 9PM Friday and Saturday evenings! Here I purchased two books: On Rue Tatin by Susan Herrmann Loomis and The United States of Arugula by David Kamp. Then it was over to The Serendipity Bookstore, the used bookstore in town and what a charming store it is. Housed in a Victorian home it could almost be missed if one wasn’t looking for it. I was specifically looking for a nonfiction book by Laurie Colwin. The proprietor was familiar with the book, checked the inventory and didn’t have a copy, but she showed me where other similar books were and, of course I bought two, MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating and Let Us Eat Cake by Sharon Boorstin.

Now it was getting on toward dinner time, but as we were looking for somewhere to eat, I saw that there was still an “Open” sign on the wine shop and they were advertising wine tasting. Well, it didn’t take me long to decide where we were going next. The fact that the third bookstore was in close proximity didn’t hurt either. After a bit of wine tasting (and some purchasing) we took the stairs to the third bookstore, The Harbor Bookstore. Now while this is a lovely little bookstore that I have visited several times before, most recently two years ago with my grandson, I couldn’t find anything I wanted this visit. It could be that I had more things on my mind, like dinner. We did get what turned out to be a fabulous recommendation for a restaurant from the clerk at this bookstore when she told us about The Backdoor Kitchen One would never accidentally happen on this gem of a place. Even when we were looking for it, we couldn’t believe there was a restaurant in the back of this warehouse. We were glad we persevered because in spite of the cool weather (without reservations, we had to sit outside on the patio) we had one of the most delicious meals we’d eaten in a long time (John had the lamb, I had the scallops). We returned to our B&B with smiles on our faces knowing we’d found someplace very special that we’d be able to return to often.