Stanwood, Fairhaven and those majestic Douglas Firs...

CAUTION: This is a long meaningless post of events. It is probably of little concern to any of you. And as such...

On Saturday morning I woke up at 9:30am. It was a little later than I had wanted to and I'd already missed a phone call from my father. I called him back and to be honest I'm not sure why he wanted me to call him. I think it had something to do with computers. But as is standard between the two of us it turned into an exchange of political ideology. I got so wrapped up in it, I didn't realize the time had passed and NESF was waiting for me on the street.

I rushed to get a few things together and ran out the door. He had MNom's car (props to MNom!) and I got into the small red civic, ready for the road. We made a quick stop at Northgate to get a boot and then it was time to head north.

We were both hungry and becoming increasingly so as we passed through Marysville. I saw a sign that said "Stanwood" and remembering my time there as a child decided that it was the perfect place to find a diner. Just off the freeway there is only a gas station, burger joint and coffee barn. We headed a little further in to find a serious of offensive strip malls. In an attempt to find the "old town" we headed down a road that gave us a few of the sound through a cemetery. There was a strange feeling like I know someone there, and I may very well, but its not who I thought it was.

The road wrapped back around to reveal what we'd been looking for, the old town. Large rusting metal structures rose sporadically around the small line of shops and restaurants. We decided that we should just walk the area to find a place, the car would be too confining to really get a feel for it all.

For there not being too much there, Stanwood had a pretty decent selection of restaurants. We ended up at a little breakfast joint called "The Duck In". As soon as we walked in I knew we were in the right place, and the wrong place. As a city dweller I find that once you get away from the urban density people tend to look at you different, as if to say, "Oh, you're one of them." It wasn't completely overwhelming in at "The Duck In" but it was there. They knew where we were from.

We ordered our breakfast, which was neither terrible nor fantastic. The best part about the whole thing was when we were leaving. NESF noticed a CD for sale by the register. On the cover there was a man with a mustache and a big cowboy hat. He then turned just slightly to see that the man on the CD was sitting at the bar, wearing the hat. It was all too perfect.

We got back to the car and continued our path north. It should be noted that last week we'd agreed to each buy two of the reissued Pavement albums, and we'd both received them on Friday. So we were listening to Wowee Zowee cruisin' up I-5. I'd forgotten how pleasant the drive is once you break free from Burlington. Steep slopes rise up from nothing in chaotic patterns and covered in the fantastic trees we've got growing around here. Big, majestic. Douglas Firs. "Douglas Firs..."

It should also be noted that the final stretch into Bellingham is a bit treacherous. You have to be constantly alert for falling rocks. We were able to navigate the wandering rocks and instead of being crushed alive I actually got to see a little waterfall on the side of the interstate.

We exited the freeway and drove the short distance down into Fairhaven. Fairhaven. Just the name has a magical quality to it. Fairhaven.

We parked the car on the south side and took to the ground. The first matter of business was to find a ale. We walked up and down the streets with no luck. We found a couple of wine bars, but no tavern or ale house or beer room, not even just a standard bar. We contemplated asking someone, but never did, I think it's because it was only shortly after noon and neither of us wanted to come across as a drunkard, even to complete strangers.

After we thought we'd seen it all with no success I noticed a small sign with hands pointing in various directions. Sure enough one of the hands pointed us in the right direction "Archer Ale House" half a block away. Not ten minutes before we'd walked past it and completely missed it, probably because the place was underground.

We descended the rough stone staircase to find exactly what we were looking for. It was early, so only a few committed basketball fans were there. We ordered a couple of IPA's and found a cribbage board. I lost. Badly. Well I didn't get lurched or anything like that, but I lost. We finished our second pint and decided to venture out into the bookstore.

Village books is a great bookstore. It's three levels and in the back is a nice little park. They mix the used in with the new, which I like. It also has a generally pleasant atmosphere. We wandered the shelves for a while before I purchased a couple of books, Demian by Hesse and the new DeLilo novel.

The books went to the car and while we were getting back into the heart of Fairhaven I got a painful lust for nachos. There was a Mexican place by the sign of hands so we dipped in. The woman handed us menus and told us that there was a table upstairs while she wandered off into the kitchen. This should have been a sign of things to come, but we didn't catch it.

We ordered some nachos and soup. The nachos were a little intimidating. It was a massive plate of goodness. But as time passed the chips got soggy, making the whole thing very difficult to attack and as much as we tried we couldn't finish them all. Then came the waiting. We had made it very obvious that we'd finished eating and were waiting for a check. Waiting. Waiting. Thought about just dippin' out the side door. They could never find us. Waiting. Waiting. Really if they wanted us to pay they'd bring us a check. Waiting. Maybe they forgot about us. Waiting...

Finally we got up and went downstairs. I stared at the women who gave us the menus as she talked quickly with our waitress. They fumbled with the computer, every once in a while looking over at us with terror. We should have just left. It appeared that they didn't have our check and they had to recreate it. They never would have known. We paid them got the hell out of there. Moral of the story: Don't eat at Milagro's.

We headed out and decided that we should walk off the gut bomb of cheese we just ingested. Luckily there was a little path nearby. We walked along, overheard a couple discussing the politics of health care, lamented the blackberries and ivy along the trails edge (PMRob was mentioned as a solution), noticed a used bookstore up the hill. We reached the end of the trail and there were some kids smoking pot by an dilapidated barn like structure. I really wanted to go inside of it, but I didn't want to deal with the stoners.

Back up on the street we dipped into the before mentioned bookstore. Wow. Wow. It was great. There were piles of books everywhere. At first glance there didn't seem to be any order to how the books were arranged. After about ten minutes I got the structure down. I wandered through the aisles looking at books about UFOs, how to raise sheep, Ecotopia, etc.

NESF went up to the counter to purchase a book about Joyce's Ireland. The man behind the counter started the transaction by saying, "thanks for checkin' in with us." A very strange thing to say to someone that you've never met before. I concluded that he was in fact a trans-dimensional being and that in one of this other realms of existence NESF is his colleague and works in the bookstore with him. That still didn't explain the "us" so much. And so ended our time in Fairhaven.

We returned to the Civic and headed south back down the interstate. All in all a good trip, perfect day long escape...