Has anyone been to Bellingham, WA?
Jan 29th, 2000, 07:20 AM
#1
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Has anyone been to Bellingham, WA?
Has anyone visited Bellingham, Washington? Did you like the town? Is there enoug to do for a seven-year-old and an eleven-year-old (and, of course, their parents)?
Any interesting sights? Places? People?
I'd love to hear from anone with GOOD and BAD experiences. I'll even read SO-SO experiences and take them into account.
Thanks,
John
Any interesting sights? Places? People?
I'd love to hear from anone with GOOD and BAD experiences. I'll even read SO-SO experiences and take them into account.
Thanks,
John
Jan 29th, 2000, 07:26 AM
#2
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Hi John, I've spent some time in Bellingham, both overnights and day trips (I live in Seattle). I enjoy it; it's a very nice small city. When are you thinking of going, and how long were you planning on staying? What to do can of course depend greatly on the season. Bellingham itself probably wouldn't offer enough to do for more than a day or so, but it makes a great base for day trips to other places such as the North Cascades, Vancouver and the San Juans.
Jan 29th, 2000, 08:25 AM
#4
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I live here. What do you want to know? It's a small (60000+) college town on a bay, overlooking some of the San Juan Islands and Mt. Baker behind it. In May, we hold the Ski to Sea race from the top of Mt. Baker to the Bay, always a huge fun event. There are daffodil festivals to the south of us in April, and lakes and rivers to play in during summer. June is often rainy, tho. Email me for more info.
Jan 29th, 2000, 10:46 AM
#5
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Hmm. Unless you are thinking of moving there and want to get an idea of what it's like from that perspective, I'm not sure that I'd choose Bellingham for a stay of one to two weeks. What do you hope to get out of your visit? From your other posts, it sounds like you are familiar with the NW--do you live here? I'm just trying to get a sense of "why Bellingham?".
Jan 29th, 2000, 04:43 PM
#6
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Seattle. I'm just curious why the Seattle media always put down Bellingham--they only seem to report on disasters, snow storms, and that sort of things. Never the good stuff. The Seattle Times is particularly rabid. It seems that for the Times the civilized world takes a leap between Mount Vernon and the Canadian border. Everything in between is murky gray.
Maybe a Times editor had a bad meal in Bellingham, or got a room with coackroaches?
Are the any good restaurants in Bellingham? How about clean lodging?
And are there any decent parks? How about renting a row boat on the waterfront?
I heard it snowed so much last week, you can go cross-country skiing downtown. Now that would be something: skiing to dinner!
Is there a good (safe) bar in town? How about pizza?
Maybe a Times editor had a bad meal in Bellingham, or got a room with coackroaches?
Are the any good restaurants in Bellingham? How about clean lodging?
And are there any decent parks? How about renting a row boat on the waterfront?
I heard it snowed so much last week, you can go cross-country skiing downtown. Now that would be something: skiing to dinner!
Is there a good (safe) bar in town? How about pizza?
Jan 29th, 2000, 05:57 PM
#7
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B'ham has some nice features, but I guess I wouldn't really call it a destination. You might consider staying up at Birch Bay. My family spent a week in the summers up there when I was a child. Birch Bay is a beautiful huge perfect arc of beach right near Canada and about 20 min. from B'ham. So you could stay on the beach and enjoy what B'ham has to offer too. You could take day trips to Mt. Bachelor, the wonderful North Cascades Highway, or one of the west's best destination cities, Vancouver, Canada. There's a four star golf resort nearby at Semiahmoo, if you want to golf or enjoy a fancy meal. Don't want to criticize Bellingham though!
Jan 29th, 2000, 06:08 PM
#8
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No snow here, John. Not sure where you heard that. A few pizza afficionados would tell you there are good pizza places here. Not a bar hopper so can't help you there, although I believe there is a large group of B'hamsters that like the music and party scene our town offers. Gorgeous scenery and you could rent a boat on B'ham Bay, but it would be a mite chilly right now out there. Chuckanut Drive is known for its spectacular beauty and the Oyster Bar for its equally spectacular meals. Actually we're glad Seattle leaves us alone, we don't want the publicity.. this town has grown by leaps and bounds since the 70's and it's bursting at the seams.
Jan 30th, 2000, 01:28 PM
#11
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Hmm. I read the Seattle Times also and haven't really noticed a bias against B'ham. And snow? Last week? Again, hmm.
I covered B'ham for the last edition of NW Best Places, and found some excellent places to stay (but mostly upscale B&Bs, so not appropriate for kids; however, there are a number of chain motels in town and I'm sure they are fine) and some decent restaurants (although nothing that knocked my socks off). Can't remember any stand-out pizza places. Loved a couple of the brewpubs--Boundary Bay, downtown, and Orchard Street Brewery, in sort of an odd location in an office park outside of downtown. Great atmosphere and food at each. Whatcom Falls Park WAS lovely, although it was the site of the pipeline tragedy, so it may not be now. Chuckanut Drive (and the parks along that route) is another favorite in the area. Fairhaven (the historic district) is nice to walk around.
I covered B'ham for the last edition of NW Best Places, and found some excellent places to stay (but mostly upscale B&Bs, so not appropriate for kids; however, there are a number of chain motels in town and I'm sure they are fine) and some decent restaurants (although nothing that knocked my socks off). Can't remember any stand-out pizza places. Loved a couple of the brewpubs--Boundary Bay, downtown, and Orchard Street Brewery, in sort of an odd location in an office park outside of downtown. Great atmosphere and food at each. Whatcom Falls Park WAS lovely, although it was the site of the pipeline tragedy, so it may not be now. Chuckanut Drive (and the parks along that route) is another favorite in the area. Fairhaven (the historic district) is nice to walk around.
Jan 30th, 2000, 03:04 PM
#15
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Um, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. I think it would be a great place to live if one prefers smaller cities in a pretty setting with a college-town atmosphere. But I wouldn't necessarily choose it over other NW destinations for a week or even a weekend away. We are blessed here in the NW with so many amazing places to go that we are spoiled for choice. Bellingham seems to me to be a place where people LIVE, rather than a tourist destination. Does that make sense?
Why don't you just go for a short visit and see for yourself? No one can make up your mind for you!
Why don't you just go for a short visit and see for yourself? No one can make up your mind for you!
Jan 31st, 2000, 02:03 PM
#18
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John-Having spent quite a few weeks at a time in that area for the past 20 years(mother in law lives in that area)-I would recommend going up to Vancover at that time of the year because it has so many things to do (especially when the weather turns bad). Canadian dollar gives a good return for the US dollar and Vancover has something for everyone! Bellingham is a nice place to visit but not for a week at a time(my opinion). April has winter/snow runoff in mountains (not alwys good to go see Mt. Baker)Enj
,sometimes rainy,etc. so you could be spending alot of time drinking coffee at the BELLIS FAIR MALL in Bellingham!Debbie
,sometimes rainy,etc. so you could be spending alot of time drinking coffee at the BELLIS FAIR MALL in Bellingham!Debbie
Jan 31st, 2000, 04:43 PM
#19
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Dear John
(if that’s your real name), I must say it’s not nice for you to impersonate me. What’s the world coming to when I can’t leave town for a weekend without having a stranger help himself to my web site. But I am not going to be angry, since you have raised some valuable points, but there may be two important facts you do not know:
1. I do not have any children.
2. I have lived in Bellingham for the last quarter of a century.
But have brought up two points I have occasionally wondered about. I’ve had this feeling that Bellinghamsters don’t really know their town, and I was right, or they wouldn’t confuse Mount Baker with Oregon’s Mount Bachelor, or tell me to skip Bellingham and instead go to Birch Bay, an insipid and somewhat seedy resort area in the North County.
I had also suspected that Seattle writers don’t really know Bellingham, and you have uncovered another one who doesn’t. (The Northwest Best Places once were an authority on the region but have sadly slipped during the last decade.)
As far as those visitors are concerned who spend a rainy day having coffee at Bellis Fair, a horrid little shopping mall north of town . . . . all I can say is that the Convention and Visitors Bureau has not done a good job of telling visitors about better options. And, yes, I have been to Vancouver, B.C. It’s a beautiful city, but I find the current crop of Vancouverites (with the exception of the Chinese) rather pushy and vulgar. They’re also the world’s worst drivers.
But back to Bellingham.
I would quite obviously not get bored after a night’s stay (or after a week or two) in town, since I haven’t gotten bored for the last quarter of a century. There is simply too much to do!
This morning, I took a hike in Whatcom Falls Park, which was one of my favorite places when I lived on Lake Whatcom. I had not been back for years, but Sheri’s comment, that it had been wasted in last year’s explosion and fire, made me curious, since local news stories said the park had been spared. It was spared and is more beautiful than ever (the fire happened downstream and barely singed the park’s western edge). As I crossed the stone bridge at the big falls, the sun broke through the clouds and painted a rainbow across the mists. A water ouzel flew straight at the cataract and vanished in a patch of wet moss. A chickadee chattered in the cedars . . . .
Later in the day, I walked to downtown Fairhaven (the southern part of Bellingham, where I live, which has its own identity), and met a doe in the middle of the road. We stared at each other before going our separate ways. Like other Fairhaven deer, she was singularly unafraid of humans (though some of my neighbors shush the deer away when they eat roses, peas, and other garden plants). As I walked along Padden Creek, where chum salmon spawn in fall, I noted that the first green buds are forming on the osoberries (we are having a very mild winter—my camellias are in full bloom). As I walked home along the waterfront, a bald eagle cruised overhead; a great blue heron fished in Padden Lagoon.
These happenings highlight one of the things I like best about Bellingham—the easy way in which the town slips into its natural surroundings, and the way the natural world ignores the city’s boundaries. On Lake Whatcom, we had eagles, ducks, deer, beavers, and otters; in Fairhaven, we have eagles, hawks (some of which regularly visit my bird feeder), ducks, raccoons, coyotes, deer, and salmon. It’s the kind of world I am happy to live in. Best of all, the most important places are in easy walking distance: a grocery store, several pubs, bookstores, a pharmacy, and even a garden shop are just a short stroll away. If I feel energetic, I can take the trail to Chuckanut Bay and Larrabee State Park, or hike up Chuckanut Mountain.
Fairhaven has good pizza (Stanello’s) but lacks fine restaurants. For those you have to go downtown. (Wild Garlic and D’Anna’s are the current local favorites.)
Apart from it’s restaurants, downtown is rather boring—much like a Midwestern farm town that’s been picked up by a hurricane and set down in the wrong place. Highlights include a rather plain art-deco city hall, a very unappealing post-modern court house, ad a gaggle of empty storefronts. Worst of all, downtown is cut off from the waterfront by one of the West’s ugliest pulp mills—which looks like one of Piranesi’s more horrid dungeons.
But Old Town, just north of downtown is being fixed up and becoming more appealing. You can learn about local history at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, or you can watch salmon spawn (in season) on the site of a recycled sewage treatment plant.
On a warm summer’s day you can cool off next to a waterfall—the very place where Bellingham was founded in the 1850s. From this Maritime Heritage Park, you can walk north along the waterfront, past the yacht basins, to Squalicum Harbor, where Bellingham’s fishing fleet docks.
Or you could visit Western Washington University, high up on a hill. On a rainy day, you might want to while away the time over a cup of coffee (this is a much more pleasant place than the tawdry mall). If the skies are clear, you could study the university’s outdoor sculpture collection, or you take a hike through the arboretum to the top of Sehome Hill, for great views of Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands, Mount Baker, and the Canadian Coast Mountains. On a clear day, you can see the snowcapped peaks of the Olympic Mountains to the southwest.
There’s so much to do here—so much more than I can write about in this limited space.
There are, however, a few places, besides downtown, that you might want to avoid: the shopping-mall-and-motel-strips along Samish Way and I-5, Lakeway and I-5, and the Guide Meridian and I-5.
On the other hand you could spend a week exploring Lake Whatcom (there’s a boat rental place in summer at Bloedel-Donovan Park, at the lake’s north end). You could spend days hiking the many Greenway trails, and visit secret groves and waterfalls. You could hike to mountain lakes (on Chuckanut Mountain), you could fish at Lake Padden, crab at Wildcat Cove . . . . You could take a passenger ferry from the Fairhaven waterfront to the San Juan Islands . . . .
Anyway, you may begin to see why I’m not bored after all those years I’ve lived here.
(if that’s your real name), I must say it’s not nice for you to impersonate me. What’s the world coming to when I can’t leave town for a weekend without having a stranger help himself to my web site. But I am not going to be angry, since you have raised some valuable points, but there may be two important facts you do not know:
1. I do not have any children.
2. I have lived in Bellingham for the last quarter of a century.
But have brought up two points I have occasionally wondered about. I’ve had this feeling that Bellinghamsters don’t really know their town, and I was right, or they wouldn’t confuse Mount Baker with Oregon’s Mount Bachelor, or tell me to skip Bellingham and instead go to Birch Bay, an insipid and somewhat seedy resort area in the North County.
I had also suspected that Seattle writers don’t really know Bellingham, and you have uncovered another one who doesn’t. (The Northwest Best Places once were an authority on the region but have sadly slipped during the last decade.)
As far as those visitors are concerned who spend a rainy day having coffee at Bellis Fair, a horrid little shopping mall north of town . . . . all I can say is that the Convention and Visitors Bureau has not done a good job of telling visitors about better options. And, yes, I have been to Vancouver, B.C. It’s a beautiful city, but I find the current crop of Vancouverites (with the exception of the Chinese) rather pushy and vulgar. They’re also the world’s worst drivers.
But back to Bellingham.
I would quite obviously not get bored after a night’s stay (or after a week or two) in town, since I haven’t gotten bored for the last quarter of a century. There is simply too much to do!
This morning, I took a hike in Whatcom Falls Park, which was one of my favorite places when I lived on Lake Whatcom. I had not been back for years, but Sheri’s comment, that it had been wasted in last year’s explosion and fire, made me curious, since local news stories said the park had been spared. It was spared and is more beautiful than ever (the fire happened downstream and barely singed the park’s western edge). As I crossed the stone bridge at the big falls, the sun broke through the clouds and painted a rainbow across the mists. A water ouzel flew straight at the cataract and vanished in a patch of wet moss. A chickadee chattered in the cedars . . . .
Later in the day, I walked to downtown Fairhaven (the southern part of Bellingham, where I live, which has its own identity), and met a doe in the middle of the road. We stared at each other before going our separate ways. Like other Fairhaven deer, she was singularly unafraid of humans (though some of my neighbors shush the deer away when they eat roses, peas, and other garden plants). As I walked along Padden Creek, where chum salmon spawn in fall, I noted that the first green buds are forming on the osoberries (we are having a very mild winter—my camellias are in full bloom). As I walked home along the waterfront, a bald eagle cruised overhead; a great blue heron fished in Padden Lagoon.
These happenings highlight one of the things I like best about Bellingham—the easy way in which the town slips into its natural surroundings, and the way the natural world ignores the city’s boundaries. On Lake Whatcom, we had eagles, ducks, deer, beavers, and otters; in Fairhaven, we have eagles, hawks (some of which regularly visit my bird feeder), ducks, raccoons, coyotes, deer, and salmon. It’s the kind of world I am happy to live in. Best of all, the most important places are in easy walking distance: a grocery store, several pubs, bookstores, a pharmacy, and even a garden shop are just a short stroll away. If I feel energetic, I can take the trail to Chuckanut Bay and Larrabee State Park, or hike up Chuckanut Mountain.
Fairhaven has good pizza (Stanello’s) but lacks fine restaurants. For those you have to go downtown. (Wild Garlic and D’Anna’s are the current local favorites.)
Apart from it’s restaurants, downtown is rather boring—much like a Midwestern farm town that’s been picked up by a hurricane and set down in the wrong place. Highlights include a rather plain art-deco city hall, a very unappealing post-modern court house, ad a gaggle of empty storefronts. Worst of all, downtown is cut off from the waterfront by one of the West’s ugliest pulp mills—which looks like one of Piranesi’s more horrid dungeons.
But Old Town, just north of downtown is being fixed up and becoming more appealing. You can learn about local history at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, or you can watch salmon spawn (in season) on the site of a recycled sewage treatment plant.
On a warm summer’s day you can cool off next to a waterfall—the very place where Bellingham was founded in the 1850s. From this Maritime Heritage Park, you can walk north along the waterfront, past the yacht basins, to Squalicum Harbor, where Bellingham’s fishing fleet docks.
Or you could visit Western Washington University, high up on a hill. On a rainy day, you might want to while away the time over a cup of coffee (this is a much more pleasant place than the tawdry mall). If the skies are clear, you could study the university’s outdoor sculpture collection, or you take a hike through the arboretum to the top of Sehome Hill, for great views of Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands, Mount Baker, and the Canadian Coast Mountains. On a clear day, you can see the snowcapped peaks of the Olympic Mountains to the southwest.
There’s so much to do here—so much more than I can write about in this limited space.
There are, however, a few places, besides downtown, that you might want to avoid: the shopping-mall-and-motel-strips along Samish Way and I-5, Lakeway and I-5, and the Guide Meridian and I-5.
On the other hand you could spend a week exploring Lake Whatcom (there’s a boat rental place in summer at Bloedel-Donovan Park, at the lake’s north end). You could spend days hiking the many Greenway trails, and visit secret groves and waterfalls. You could hike to mountain lakes (on Chuckanut Mountain), you could fish at Lake Padden, crab at Wildcat Cove . . . . You could take a passenger ferry from the Fairhaven waterfront to the San Juan Islands . . . .
Anyway, you may begin to see why I’m not bored after all those years I’ve lived here.
Jan 31st, 2000, 08:44 PM
#20
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Now I'm really confused. So this was all just an exercise to see what the public perception of Bellingham is?
Just wanted to correct one thing: I did not say that Whatcom Falls Park had been "wasted"; I said that "it was the site of the pipeline tragedy so it MAY not be [as lovely as it was] now (emphasis added)".
I'm sorry you don't think the coverage of Bellingham in Best Places is up to snuff. I won't be doing it this time around, so I won't ask for your suggestions. But I will say that, unfortunately, I did have a poor meal at Wild Garlic (which had some good reports), so it was not included in the last edition (they will probably re-consider it for the next edition).
If you reread my posts, I think you will find that I mentioned many of the positives about Bellingham that you did, and certainly did not say that it was boring. I also suggested that the person go and check it out for himself.
Anyway, I was making a sincere effort to offer my opinion (as were the other posters) and I feel a little bamboozled. And that's all I have to say!
Just wanted to correct one thing: I did not say that Whatcom Falls Park had been "wasted"; I said that "it was the site of the pipeline tragedy so it MAY not be [as lovely as it was] now (emphasis added)".
I'm sorry you don't think the coverage of Bellingham in Best Places is up to snuff. I won't be doing it this time around, so I won't ask for your suggestions. But I will say that, unfortunately, I did have a poor meal at Wild Garlic (which had some good reports), so it was not included in the last edition (they will probably re-consider it for the next edition).
If you reread my posts, I think you will find that I mentioned many of the positives about Bellingham that you did, and certainly did not say that it was boring. I also suggested that the person go and check it out for himself.
Anyway, I was making a sincere effort to offer my opinion (as were the other posters) and I feel a little bamboozled. And that's all I have to say!
