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The Ever Changing Plans: A Perfectly Serendipitous Tour of Washington

As we have said many times, we love traveling with no reservations for lots of reasons but a major factor is the option to be flexible with our plans. We have certainly made the most of this benefit in the last few weeks. We had originally planned to spend all summer in Montana, Wyoming, Northern Idaho with maybe a jaunt into Alberta, Canada. While we were in Montana we had the idea to go visit some old friends of ours back east with some airline miles that will soon be expiring.

We researched our options for getting to Boston from the North West and it made most sense to fly from Seattle. After all, we had no firm plans so why not visit Seattle and make the most of our time there.  Iain's sister lives nearby so it seemed like a good plan. We could store the trailer somewhere near the city and get the ferry across to Bainbridge Island to see them too. Perfect!

A few days later we started to think- why don't we take the ferry with the Airstream and go visit a little bit of the Olympic Peninsula. We were planning to spend more time exploring there on a future visit, but a little taste would be nice. We looked at ferries and decided we could get to Kingston, drive to Port Townsend and Dungeness and still have plenty of time to get back to Bainbridge Island to visit with family before our Boston flight. Perfect!!

Beautiful Victorian Town of Port Townsend
A few weeks later we got chatting with some new friends we met in Coeur d'Alene, Mike and Valerie (aka The Techno Gypsies). They mentioned taking the ferry from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend and that perhaps it would be an even better choice. They told us the drive through Deception Pass State Park was spectacular and recommended we try for reservations there. We looked at maps and decided - yeah we can make that work. We could stop at Leavenworth on the way from Coeur d'Alene then go to Whidbey Island and still have time to visit a couple of places we wanted check out on the Olympic Peninsula. We got the last spot in the very, very busy Deception Pass State Park and booked a ferry reservation from Coupeville on Whidbey Island to Port Townsend. Perfect!!!

Stunningly Scenic Deception Pass
As we started making our way there our friends Kelly and Mike reached out on Instagram. They told us we would be really close to where they are on Orcas Island - let's meet up for the day. Given that we had a few days at Deception Pass we knew we could squeeze in a walk-on island ferry trip the day before we left for our Port Townsend ferry. Perfect!!!!

A visit to Kelly and Mike's New Home
Then another note on Instagram from our wonderful traveling buddies Dave and Shannon (aka 2wanderAway) They were going to be spending a couple of weeks at their family home on San Juan Island while we were in the area. They invited us to come and stay. We knew that squeezing another day trip to the San Juan Islands was going to be tough before our Thursday reservation on the ferry to Port Townsend.  But then we thought, why do just a day trip. We could change our ferry reservation, leave the Airstream somewhere and spend a few days with them. After making some calls we found a reasonably priced storage place for 4 days in nearby Oak Harbor so we could spend a few days with Shannon and Dave on the island before sailing to Port Townsend. Perfect!!!!!

Our first experience of crabbing: Post to follow. (Warning it doesn't end well for the crab!)
So here we are. We did make it to the Olympic Peninsula and we will make it to Bainbridge Island and then Boston in the next few weeks. (Posts to follow on our first experience crabbing on San Juan Island.) Our detours along the way have meant that this unplanned Washington trip has been filled with unexpected surprise and confirmed to us that no reservations is the PERFECT way for us to travel. 




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