Island Day

The Sunday before Thanksgiving was our first full day in Seattle. We used it to visit Vashon Island, in Puget Sound. Part of the visit was about the novelty of getting there. No bridges connect to Vashon, so you have to take a ferry. Driving a car onto a ferry and having it carry you to an island feels Bucket Listy, and we decided to cross it off.

Our plan was to visit a couple of cider markers on the island, but we'd arrived before their noon opening times. So our first stop was the Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie. It's a converted 100-year-old building that houses the original location of what eventually became Seattle's Best Coffee.

The old building wasn't the only atmosphere; we got a strong sense of the island on the drive there. I lost count of the number of rainbow flags I saw in a drive of just a few miles. The locals were clearly a progressive, inclusive bunch of people. Of course, we'd see over the next few days that this described Seattle in general. Yet it felt like as Boulder is to Denver, so Vashon Island is to Seattle -- probably the hippiest, most welcoming, most laid back place in the state.

I'd heard a lot about Point Robinson Lighthouse, on the far tip of the island. As nothing was really that "far" on the island, we drove out to see for ourselves. The lighthouse itself was surprisingly small, not really the sort of thing I'd think of as a tourist draw, but the view (on another uncharacteristically bright and clear day) was impressive.

From there, we hit two cider makers on Vashon, Nashi Orchards and Dragon's Head Cider. Both had beautiful surroundings and tasty drinks. Both impressed us with their Perry ciders even more than the ones made from apples. But Nashi Orchards would get the gold medal. Though they had fewer varieties to sample, each and every one of them was stellar.

In between the two cider makers, we had lunch at a restaurant called The Hardware Store. Like the Coffee Roasterie, this was another conversion of an older building. (Can you guess what the place used to be?) This was one of a few places suggested to us by a local at Nashi Orchards, and you have to go with the recommendation of a local, right? (Though, as he pointed out, having been there "only" 15 years, the True Locals didn't consider him a local.)

We came back across the ferry in the mid-afternoon. Well... late afternoon. We never really did get used to that sunset just after 4:00 pm. But we did regroup and rest at our hotel a bit before heading back out for a low key evening. We switched from cider to beer and tried Black Raven Brewing Company over in Redmond. Like many Denver microbreweries, it was located in an office/warehouse sort of complex. But inside, the place had a fun pub atmosphere with a bit of a twisted and segmented layout. (And it had a decent Coconut Porter too.)

We wrapped up with our one non-seafood dinner of the trip, stopping at a ramen bar and enjoying a change of pace. Between the early sunset, the time zone shift, and all the hopping around, that was all the activity we needed before calling it a fun and complete day.