Whidbey Island known for quaint towns, views

By CARY ORDWAY

Spend some time exploring Puget Sound and you’ll be both surprised and enchanted by the islands, waterways and hundreds of miles of shoreline that provide visitors a thousand opportunities for scenic photographs that they will treasure for a lifetime. Visit the area on a sunny day and there is no more beautiful place on earth.

The amazing thing is you don’t have to journey far from Seattle to experience some of the best island scenery this corner of the state has to offer. If you have the time, the San Juan Islands are an unforgettable experience. But if you don’t want to travel more than an hour or so, many of the same attributes are found on Whidbey Island.

Our recent getaway to South Whidbey Island is a great example of achieving the maximum change of scenery in the shortest amount of time. From Seattle, it’s just a half-hour drive or so north to Mukilteo, where the ferry landing serves as a portal to Puget Sound’s island culture. The ferries run every half hour from Mukilteo to Clinton, at the southern tip of Whidbey Island.

Unless you’re arriving in peak traffic – such as the Friday night getaway – most times of the day and week your wait will be fairly short. As we reached Mukilteo there are many signs directing automobile traffic to the ferry landing and, when you get there, it’s a simple matter of driving through a toll booth – where you pay just a few dollars for your car and passengers – and then into a line where you’ll wait several minutes for the next ferry to arrive. The Washington State Ferries have the boarding process down pat – everything moves efficiently and it is impressive that so many cars are able to get on and off the ferry in just a few minutes.

Once on the ferry, it’s maybe a 20-minute voyage across the channel and, before you know it, you’ve arrived on the island. Signs point you to destinations further north on the island and you realize you have very quickly exchanged the busy bustle of Seattle traffic for the country roads that slither through the forested hills and valleys of Whidbey. Now, instead of row houses and endless population, you see farm houses and open fields planted with gardens or crops, with barns and fancy 4X4’s that hint there are more than a few gentlemen farmers in residence here.

Take a look at your watch, and you’ll find that the second hand is moving just a little bit more slowly now – or so it seems. You’re on “island time” now and the sooner you get used to it, the sooner you will completely decompress – and de-stress – from your everyday job.

Our destination for the night was Langley, a quaint and exceedingly small coastal town about a dozen miles from the ferry terminal. With its historic main street – technically, it’s 1st Street -- and eclectic shops, it’s no surprise that this little berg is a magnet for artists and people who feel a rejuvenation of the spirit as they gaze from downtown viewpoints across Saratoga Passage to Camano Island on the other side of the water. The town is popular as a daytrip – elapsed time from downtown Seattle was well under 90 minutes – and, with the availability of several fine lodgings, also as an overnight escape.

Before we checked into our accommodations for