Washington’s San Juan Islands

It was misting as the ferry from Anacortes nosed into the harbor on Orcas Island. Gulls roosted on weathered pilings and a thunderhead boiling on the horizon was drenched with the flames of a dying sun.

En route to Orcas the ferry passed other islands whose beaches were choked with driftwood and whose coves provided shelter for small boats that bobbed drunkenly on incoming tides.

Before leaving Anacortes, motorists lined up bumper-to-bumper, bikes and boats lashed to their rooftops.

Later at sea, passengers abandoned their cars for a coffee shop on board while others stood at the railing studying passing islands with cabins poking out of rich green forests. Although the San Juan group numbers 172 islands, only four of the largest--Lopez, Shaw, Orcas and San Juan--are served by the Washington State Ferry System.

It is a short and pleasant journey that brings to mind scenes reminiscent of Maine and Massachusetts with their weathered saltboxes and fishing trawlers. Gulls wheel above the ferry and bald eagles ride thermals on a distant horizon.

At Orcas I spotted Steve Dalquist, the manager of Beach Haven Resort with its scattering of cabins at water’s edge in a wilderness setting of pure peace.

The drive to Beach Haven from the ferry followed a country lane, meandering past wet green meadows with cattle and sheep and forests of fir and ponderosa pine. Wildflowers blanketed the roadside and a fawn stared frozen in stillness behind a weathered fence.

During the 20-minute drive to Beach Haven, we passed but one other car. Everywhere the earth was green. The windows of old-fashioned farmhouses framed yellow light in the gathering dusk and the air was sweet with a mixture of salt and pine. We passed a B&B; whose owner waved. Steve waved back.

At Beach Haven a sign loomed beside the road. “There’s room at our paradise tonight.” In the opposite direction another sign advised departing guests that they were leaving Beach Haven and “entering the world.”

Young Dalquist traded his native Minnesota with its bitter winters for the mild seasons of Orcas Island, which he shares with his wife, Shirley, a refugee from Ohio.

It is no secret that Beach Haven would be a bore to partygoers. A terrible, disappointing bore. It’s simply too quiet, too peaceful. There’s not even TV. Only cabins with kitchens and fireplaces and windows that frame other islands while the wind moans through pines on the western shore of Orcas. Unless the vacationer enjoys greenery and fresh air and salmon fishing and plucking blueberries that grow wild in the forest, scratch Orcas Island altogether.

Try Hawaii or the Caribbean instead.

Vacationers come to Orcas to set the soul free. Little action surfaces, even in Eastsound, a small village on the bay with a couple of markets, an inn and several restaurants, one of which is quite good, Christina’s, which features fresh beef and marvelous seafood along with garden-fresh produce.

Eastsound is barely four blocks long and Christina’s, with windows that face the bay, is perched on the second floor of the old two-story Island Union Building. Its seafood comes from channels in and around Orcas as well as the icy waters of Puget Sound.

One morning I stopped for breakfast at the Bungalow, a restaurant facing the bay and a driftwood-strewn beach while steam rose from the folds of offshore islands. Beyond, thickets of wildflowers grew by the shore, where a rickety rowboat had been beached by a retreating tide.

Sharing the street was a pottery shop and a service station and a New England-style inn, the Outlook, with brass beds, marbletop dressers and a cozy bar that seemed perfect for one of those foggy evenings. Frame buildings lined the street of Eastsound. Orcas Home-grown Market displayed fresh halibut and salmon, crab, mussels, oysters and clams along with flour, beans, bran, alfalfa seeds, dates and nuts in old-fashioned bins and two-gallon jars.

Co-op Displays Artworks

Several miles beyond Eastsound I ran into Marcy Lund at Orcas Island Artworks, a co-op that displays the works of local craftsmen and artists, including oils and pottery, ceramics, handmade quilts and the artistry of woodworkers and weavers.

Occupying one corner of the old barn-like building, Marcy Lund serves homemade soups (broccoli, mushroom and a bean and sausage mixture), plus roasted cashew and chicken sandwiches, and a wonderful combination of mushrooms, cream cheese, sour cream, dill and walnuts rolled into filo dough. Her desserts are downright outrageous: strawberry-rhubarb cobbler, blueberry cheese cake and chocolate and blueberry pies.

On the same country lane I stopped to visit with Joan Vening, an Irish lass who displays hand-knit sweaters and kilted skirts in a store inside her home. With her husband Jeffrey (the island’s only piper) she settled on Orcas because somehow it reminded her of home and County Down and for Jeffrey it reflected fond memories of England and Scotland.

Joan Vening studied the green pastures and rolling hills bright with Scotch broom. “Yes, it’s like home.”

Born on the Island

Vern Coffelt, who works for the Orcas Power & Light Co., was born on the island as were his parents, and except for an occasional visit to Seattle, he’s known only the solace of Orcas. Until recently he hadn’t considered ever going elsewhere. But now the lineup of cars at the ferry landing is getting longer and each year when he goes to Seattle the wait to board the ferry is longer, too.

“It’s a beautiful place to live,” the 57-year-old Coffelt says, “but. . . .”

In truth, except for the ferries, Orcas is uncrowded, with miles of winding country lanes, shady glens and deserted coves. At Moran State Park vacationers picnic beneath alders, cedars and fir trees, and they hike to the summit of Mt. Constitution for a 360-degree view of the San Juans and Canada. Others camp near waterfalls that spill into five lakes.

Of all the San Juans, Orcas with its 20-odd resorts draws good-size crowds in summer. Barbara Jamieson’s Orcas Hotel--”your doorway to the island’s Victorian past”--appears like a saltbox removed from the coast of Maine, a gray, three-story home that’s trimmed in red and sits on a bluff facing the ferry landing. With a dozen guest rooms, it rates a line in the National Register of Historic Places. Walls are swathed in country wallpaper and a fire blazes in the dining room with its oak tables and chairs and windows that frame the harbor with its fishing trawlers and little boats.

Sipping steaming mugs of coffee, guests watch the coming and going of the ferries. On Friday nights when they disgorge weekenders, old-timers call them the “refugee boats.” Then on Sunday night when these same crowds return to the mainland, residents watch from the Orcas Hotel and someone remarks, “You poor devils--going back to those crowded cities.”

Darts in the Bar

Occasionally deer graze outside this charming little hotel while others nibble the roses and sea otters parade up from the shore. With her husband, John, Barbara Jamieson bought and refurbished the Orcas Hotel when it was near collapse. Her patrons play darts in the bar and study Wasp Channel, Shaw Island and Blind Bay from wicker rockers spread across the front porch.

A Victorian sofa provides the perfect spot for a nap in the parlor and an old-fashioned ice cream cart graces the veranda where, during a near-forgotten era, a sea captain waltzed his love to romantic melodies while the moon shone on waters only a whisper away.

My vote for the slickest inn on Orcas goes to Susan and Bill Fletcher’s two-story green-and-white Turtleback Farm (Susan is the daughter of the late Buster Crabbe of film fame). What the Fletchers sought originally was a home for themselves. Along with it they inherited an 80-acre farm, including a dilapidated shack into which they sunk $500,000.

The result is Turtleback Farm Inn, a perfectly marvelous B&B; with seven bedrooms and seven baths that feature tasteful antiques, comforters from the wool of sheep gathered on the farm, old-fashioned doorknobs and 1920s pedestal sinks removed from British Columbia’s renowned Empress Hotel.

Breakfast on Sun Deck

Breakfast is served on a sun deck that takes in lush meadows, grazing sheep and trout and duck ponds. Serenity for sale. That’s the pitch at Turtleback, where guests hike to meadows to picnic beside leafy trees, sharing the farm with lambs, Canadian geese, a dozen domestic mallards, 45 chickens and a couple of hounds (a shaggy sheep dog named Vicar and his sidekick, Sergeant, a terrier).

For life styles of another sort, vacationers deposit themselves at the venerable Rosario Resort & Spa where they are entertained with afternoon organ concerts and moonlight cruises. Guests dip into three swimming pools (one indoors) and go boating with their sweeties on a man-made lagoon. Rosario invites guests to “step back into a time when life was simple, the pace was slower and service was what you expected.”

Well, perhaps. Rosario’s provides a fun zone for the small fry (video games and pinball machines), saunas for adults, six tennis courts, riding and golf at a nearby nine-hole course. For the weary there are Swedish massages, shiatsu massages, body wraps, salt glows, steam rooms, ad infinitum.

Rosario’s isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill country inn. Not with champagne brunches, seafood buffets and dancing to a live band. This along with 179 rooms and suites.

Shipbuilder Began It

It all began with shipbuilder Robert Moran, the one-time mayor of Seattle who slipped off to Orcas after doctors advised him he had only six months to live. He succumbed 39 years later after building himself the mansion that serves as the focal point for receptions, concerts and meals. Guest units are scattered beside the mansion and along a bluff with a sweeping view of the bay where the resort maintains a private marina. Guests arrive by yacht, seaplane and ferry.

At Rosario’s deer peer from the forest, horses roam across wet meadows and bald eagles soar high above tall timber.

In contrast to Orcas with its homey B&Bs; and Rosario’s sophisticated life style, nearby Waldron Island makes a bid for primitive living--an island without telephones or electricity, where lamps are fueled with kerosene and youngsters attend a one-room schoolhouse, grades kindergarten through the eighth.

Of the four major islands in the San Juans, Shaw provides loads of country scenery and meadows for picnics--but no accommodations. Dozens of hotels and inns do business at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, while Lopez boasts a genuine 19th-Century atmosphere along with campgrounds, deserted beaches and an old-fashioned country store operated by Ken Shaw, a one-time senior vice president at Los Angeles’ Union Bank.

Spick and Span Rooms

At the same end of the island, former golf club operator Mike Bergstrom greets guests at MacKaye Harbor Inn, a cozy B&B; with five spick-and-span guest rooms that once attracted the late Sen. Scoop Jackson. Gourmet dinners are prepared nightly by Bergstrom’s wife, Robin, and guests get a head-on view of the sea while otters dart in and out of caves lining the shore.

Bergstrom, 39, is hooked on Lopez, a special island where no one locks a door, crime is unheard of and strangers are welcomed with a wave and a smile wherever they go. What’s more, Bergstrom insists, it’s impossible to get lost for more than 10 minutes on Lopez, which should tell you something about the size of Bergstrom’s hideaway.

Note: Except for MacKaye Harbor Inn, the following accommodations are all on Orcas Island:

--Beach Haven Resort, Route 1, Box 12, Eastsound, Wash. 98245. Telephone (206) 376-2288. Rates: $50/$130.

--The Outlook, Box 210, Main St., Eastsound, Wash. 98245. Telephone (206) 376-2200. Rates: $40/$68.

--Orcas Hotel, P.O. Box 155, Orcas, Wash. 98280. Telephone (206) 376-4300. Rates: $48/$75.

--Turtleback Farm, Route 1, Box 650, Eastsound, Wash. 98245. Telephone (206) 376-4914. Rates: $50/$90.

--Rosario Resort & Spa, Eastsound, Wash. 98245. Telephone (206) 376-2222. Rates: $80/$165.

--MacKaye Harbor Inn, Box 1940, Lopez Island, Wash. 98261. Telephone (206) 468-2253. Rates: $59/$69.