Weekend on Whidbey

This past Friday afternoon, we loaded up the family van and were able to head up to Whidbey Island for a weekend geocaching event. Winters are long here and I am always looking for an opportunity to sneak in a mini-vacation here and there so it was a perfect fit.

We were joined in our van by Valerie’s dad who is also an avid geocacher and Pam and Michelle Sirrine also drove up separately just not wanting to miss out on anything fun.

As of a couple of weeks ago, this trip was in doubt. Most of Whidbey Island was covered by 2 ½ feet of snow which makes finding stuff already hidden pretty much impossible to find and makes looking miserable. Thankfully though, weather here has returned to our winter normal (45 and raining) and the snow had all vanished just on time for our trip.

We drove up to Mukilteo and from there took the short ferry ride over to Whidbey. I don’t think Benjamin remembers being on a ferry and was pretty impressed that we drove our van right on to the Kittitas. The ride to this island is short but I did have just enough time to explore the decks with the boys and snap a couple of pictures in the cold wind just as the sun was starting to set. I love the northwest.







Once on the Island, Valerie was patient enough to let her dad and I stop off and grab a few caches on our 40 or so mile drive to our Hotel in Oak Harbor, a town which had been settled by the Dutch many years ago. Eventually though, the littler kids were getting fussy so we picked up the pace and got to the hotel.

When I say hotel, I guess I actually mean motel. This was probably one of the more fun parts of the trip. We still have close ties to our family’s Dutch root so we are in tune to all things Holland. When we heard that there was a hotel in town called the Auld Holland Inn and that part of it was shaped like a giant windmill, we were in. The fact that the rooms were only $50 per night also didn’t hurt although the cost was a bit of a red-flag as to what we were up against.

Normally when we take these weekend trips, an indoor pool is the number one priority in hotel booking. There seems to be a real lack of these available on island though so we went to the next best thing… kitsch.

I myself am not a Hotel snob. All I want is a pretty-clean room, a bed and to not see any rodents.

This hotel looks as though it saw its glory days probably in the mid-70’s and has not been updated much since. Our room had bright blue shag carpet (kids keep your shoes on!) and gaudy wallpaper. It was great! The only thing it was missing that I hoped it would have is those coin operated “magic fingers” that I remember from yesteryear. Remember, you used to put a quarter in the slot and the mattress would vibrate? That would have been perfect here.




The rooms came with their own real key which I hadn’t seen in quite some time.

The ice machine was a freezer outside with Ziploc bags full of ice apparently made in just regular old ice cube trays.



The overall design of the hotel was vaguely Dutch, what with the windmill and all but the overall look seemed to be more like a German trying to look Dutch. Other than the windmill, I was thinking Bavaria. I don’t’ know if that makes sense to anyone else but it does to me.





Part of the reason we had been excited to come here was for the Dutch restaurant that had been on the same property as the hotel. We were quickly disappointed to learn that apparently Dutch food doesn’t sell. The restaurant had gone Chinese and was now called “The Imperial”. Bummer.




Maybe I didn’t mind the hotel so much because I planned to spend very little time in it. Valerie’s Dad, another friend in town for the event and I decided to extend the list of caches we would be finding and went out almost all night on Friday night off the island to the north in Anacortes. That all-nighter plus the regular route took us to over 100 caches total in a 24 hour period.

As a side note the kids were very dismayed when we later did run across an even dumpier motel than ours that did have a sign advertising and indoor pool. Next time kids...



Valerie and the kids were scarce most of the day on Saturday. Instead of caching with us, they opted to explore the island and found shopping opportunities elsewhere.

Those who were caching had a great time. The island was beautiful and the highlight was probably the 3 ½ mile loop hike that we did at Ebey Bluffs overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The hike takes you over the top of the bluffs with fantastic views and then all the way back on the rough, driftwood strewn beach. We were hiking in a stiff wind which made things even more memorable. I’ve been here a couple of times now and it always seems to be very windy.







At some point during the day of caching, I was able to finally find my 3,000th cache. Woo hoo! That is a bit of a personal milestone for me. It is a lot of geocaches.

In the evening, with the caching complete, we met back up with the rest of the family for dinner with the rest of the cachers at the unfortunately named Jumbo Buffet back in Oak Harbor.

We also stayed at the Motel again on Saturday night and then on Sunday slowly meandered back to the south taking some pictures and doing a little more exploring.





Eventually we found ourselves on the ferry once more and by late afternoon we were home again where we were happy to be able to get a good night's sleep in our own beds.