Picking Strawberries on Whidbey Island

Denise and Roger waiting for the ferry

Lighthouse at Mukilteo and our ferry in the background

View outside the restaurant in Coupeville

Chuck was the experienced fruit picker

Best crop the farmer had seen in over 15 years

Many of them were at least this large

Chuck and I picked 10 pounds in less than 15 minutes

The bridge at Deception Pass

It was the weekend and that meant we were off on an adventure with Den and Rog. Roger drove us up north to the town of Mukilteo (lots of Indian names out here) to take a ferry to Whidbey Island. It was a short ride to the island and the town of Clinton. We headed north and stopped for a little "retail therapy" in Langley and then headed to Coupeville for lunch.

We found a little restaurant right on the water and enjoyed the view with our lunch. We noticed that strawberry shortcake was featured at the local farmers market and that gave me an idea -- find out where we could pick some strawberries. The idea was not met with great enthusiasm and I was reminded that we could purchase them already picked. That didn't sound like any fun, so off we went to find a farmer that would let us pick our own.

We found the farm just a few miles from town, after a short drive on a VERY dusty road (Roger had to wash his car when he got back home.) There were just a few people picking berries and we learned that the field had just opened for picking two days earlier, so there were PLENTY of berries. We are talking a BUMPER crop -- the best the farmer had seen in years.

And are they ever delicious! We have already made freezer jam -- about 9 pints for us. It tastes so much better than store-bought jam, it's bound to be gone soon. We still have a few berries for strawberry shortcake but we will definitely have to go back and pick more before the short season is over.

On the way back we went to the north end of the island and across the bridge, instead of taking the ferry back. The bridge was completed in 1935. Here's a little history -- look at a map to get an idea of where we went.

In the spring of 1792, Joseph Whidbey, master of the HMS Discovery and Captain Vancouver's chief navigator, sailed through the narrow passage that is now called Deception Pass and proved that it was not really a small bay as charted by the Spaniards (hence the name "Deception"), but a deep and turbulent channel that connects the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Saratoga Passage.

In the early years of the 20th Century, travelers of the horse-and-buggy era used an unscheduled ferry to cross from Fidalgo Island to Whidbey Island. To call the ferry, they banged a saw with a mallet and then sat back to wait.

The bridge, one of the scenic wonders of the Pacific Northwest, is actually two spans, one over Canoe Pass to the north, and another over Deception Pass to the south. 16,000 cars crossed this bridge last year.