Deception Pass State Park, day 2 afternoon

October, 2017

A good old-fashioned county fair.

In my last blog post, I described seeing my childhood home near the small town of Freeland on Whidbey Island and then exploring the ferry dock on the south end of Whidbey at Clinton.  I ate my lunch at a picnic table at that sandy beach.  It was late October and yet it was sunny and warm and delightful.

After lunch, the big white truck and I headed northbound up the island back towards my little trailer that was way at the other end of the island.  But I just couldn’t stop exploring.  I got distracted almost as soon as I started heading north up island!

When our family first moved to Whidbey in 1959, the main road between the ferry at Clinton and the small community of Freeland was a back country, narrow, two-lane paved road that wound around through the woods, around small lakes, past many pastures and small homes.  It wasn’t like this main highway today that zooms up the center of the island.  So today, shortly after leaving Clinton on the south end of the island, I decided to follow that old road and took the first turn off the “new” main highway, the “new” highway having been built in the early 1960’s.

The old road took me to the South Whidbey Fair Grounds, just outside the town of Langley, and to this sign (below) that I’d never noticed before.  But that was because I hadn’t owned a travel trailer before.  Now, of course, this made me curious so I drove in.

A short dirt road led to a wide open, flat area for RV’s/trailers and to the back side of the fair grounds and the buildings where animals were housed during the annual county Fair each July.

The large fenced area between the red buildings in the photo above was the space used for outdoor 4H events and, of particular interest to me, for horse-riding events.  As a teenager, I had taken my horse Charlie to the fair a few times as a member of my local 4H club.  Hmmm, I must still have those ribbons around here somewhere ….. just a minute, I’ll be right back.

Well, ok, I can’t find the ribbons, but I know I won some.  On the other hand, I have a vague memory that EVERY kid won a ribbon for one reason or another.  More great memories. 🙂

To give you more of a sense of the place and the events, I snagged the following three photos off the internet, photographers unknown.  All three photos were taken during the annual South Whidbey Fair.

 

 

The vegetable competition is especially intense.

If you are interested, here are some links:

Island County Fairgrounds campground … http://portofsouthwhidbey.com/facilities/fairgrounds-campground-south-whidbey/

Island County Fairgrounds … http://portofsouthwhidbey.com/facilities/whidbey-island-fairgrounds-event-center/

Island County Fair … https://www.whidbeyislandfair.com/

4H winners from 2017 … http://www.southwhidbeyrecord.com/life/4-h-winners-at-whidbey-island-fair-announced/.

At the 2014 Whidbey Island County Fair, Washington State University staff presented a free composting class to all who wished to sniff out some new information in that regard.  Sadly, the presentation will not be available this coming year.

Back to today’s visit to the fairgrounds and its campground, here are two photos below of items used for lumberjack competitions (log bucking and tree climbing).

 

And now let me introduce you to the campground.  It’s not a campground like you and I think a campground would be, let me warn you.  It’s a large, open, flat area that is used mostly during the few days leading up to the Fair by all of the horse/cattle trailers that need to unload their animals and it’s used before and during the Fair by all of the RV’s and travel trailers where the humans (who own and care for those animals) live during the Fair.  During those ten days or so in July, the campground is packed solid with motorhomes and trailers of all sorts and sizes, cheek by jowl, side by side, stem to stern.

But during the rest of the year, so I’m told, there’s lots of empty space!  While I was wandering around taking photos during this visit, two friendly women approached me (one from each of the motorhomes in the photo below) and we talked for quite a while.  What both of the couples in those motorhomes like to do is to arrive before the Fair folks arrive and back their RV’s right up to that fence.  Then these folks stay right there for the Fair and have a front row seat for all of the outdoor events.  Yes, they do have to put up with a jam-packed crowded campground, but they just plan on that and it seems to be part of the fun.  They told me the rest of the year is peaceful and quiet here.

Standing in that same spot, I turned around and took the two photos below of most of the rest of the campground, although there’s another chunk of it off to the left of the first photo below.

 

You can see the campground isn’t exactly what most of us are used to, but each “site” does have electricity and water … and rabbits.  Have you been noticing the rabbits?  They were EVERYWHERE!!

The two women said that most of the rabbits have names (I didn’t write down the names), and that some of the rabbits come when called by their name.  There is a rule here that only commercial rabbit food can be fed to these critters.   Although the rabbits seem perfectly tame, they are wild.  I was warned not to pet them because they certainly might have “things” that wild animals have that we humans would not want to have.  But the rabbits sure were cute.

 

 

 

 

 

I said good-bye to the bunnies and headed on down the road in my big white truck towards Langley.

A couple of blocks past the Fair grounds was the school I attended in Langley (6th grade through 9th grade).  A big yellow school bus took us to school and delivered us back home each day.

The building on the left was the grade school.  The tan building in the middle was the gymnasium.  The building on the right housed the four-year high school, student lockers, teachers’ rooms, and administration offices … yes, all of that in this one building.

Rather than attend high school here in our home district, my brother and I drove to high school in Oak Harbor on the north end of the island near the Navy base, a much larger high school with many more resources and better educational opportunities.  Had I finished high school here in Langley, my graduating class would have totaled 12 students!

Seeing the school reminds me of an interesting side-note about people who lived on the island when we first moved here in 1959.  The north end of the island had that Navy base on it and a sizeable town (Oak Harbor) and lots of commercial stuff going on and large schools, etc.  But the central and southern parts of Whidbey were very rural.  It’s interesting to think about the types of people who are attracted to living on an island.  When we first moved to Whidbey, most of the 24 or so kids in my 6th grade class had never been off the island, even though it was just a 20 minute ferry ride.  Most of them had not even been to the north end of the island.  I was told that there were adults who would not speak to my parents because my parents were from off-island.  I suspect it’s different there today, what with a real estate boom in the 1960s and again in the 1980s, but it was quite an eye-opener for us.

On my visit here today, while camping on the north end, it took just a couple of minutes to drive through Langley, then I was back on that country road and meandering up-island towards my little travel trailer.  On the way, I came across this tidy field (below) and liked how it looked, so I pulled over to take a couple of photos.

 

Just before I put the truck in gear to pull back out onto the road, I looked in my mirror of course, but I also looked UP to the left.  Holy cow!

This Red-tailed Hawk (I think that’s what it is) had evidently been perched in that tree the whole time I was taking those photos of the field.  I captured this photograph just as the hawk was lifting off to fly away.

I did eventually make it back to my travel trailer at Deception Pass State Park at the very north end of Whidbey Island … that travel trailer was right where I had left her.  I was tired from a very long and very full day but what a great day!!!  There’s a saying we enjoyed in 4H … few things in life feel better than taking your boots off after a long day riding in a long show.  Amen.

Tomorrow I begin to explore the dangers (and the beauty) of Deception Pass.  Come on along!