Sunday September 28 was a beautiful sunny day. We planned on meeting two acquaintances on the American side of the Aldergrove Border Crossing at 10:30 am and taking Hwy 539 straight down to Bellingham where we would get on to Chuckanut Drive (aka Route 11) and take our time to Anacortes through Edison and along the Bay View - Edison Road (not the Farm to Market Road) to join in on the fun and celebration known as the Oyster Run.
Chuckanut Drive, as the City of Bellingham's official brochure explains, is 'a Native American word meaning beach on a bay with a small entrance. For over 8,000 years, local tribes harvested shellfish from the waters of the sheltered cove of Chuckanut.' Of course, on such an occasion, lunch at the Rock Fish Grill in Anacortes wouldn't seem right without trying the raw oyster shooter and the fried breaded oysters and chips.
And since the restaurant is attached to a micro-brewery, a cold pint of ale seemed an obvious and refreshing accompaniment.
Following our late lunch, we strolled the avenues of downtown Anacortes along Commercial Street admiring the wide assortment of colors and styles of hundreds of motorcycles. There was a small instrumental band, and venders evenly distributed on the side streets for about five blocks. Everyone was smiling and just happy to be there among such a large community of riders like themselves in that place on that special day.
Our ride home involved the faster, more direct route of taking Hwy 20 out of Anacortes to the I-5 north to Vancouver. It was about 5 pm and thanks to good road and traffic conditions, splendid early fall weather and speeds of 120 KMS, we made it to the Peace Arch border crossing just after 6 pm. As we waited almost two hours to go through customs, we watched the sun slowly descend upon the Pacific on the coast of Blaine, Washington, until it disappeared into darkness leaving us and hundreds of other cross-border commuters in our own unnatural lights, waiting and wondering.
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