Welcome Everyone

                       New paint job  State Street between Fairhaven and Bellingham

    A few months ago I started this second blog series of mine for several reasons.  It is still greatly under construction.  But posts and ideas are slowly making there way into each post.  I have many more exploring posts and new features in the works.  Please check out my new Facebook page at    Wyoming Jack/Bobble Head's Blogs Exploring Bellingham & Whatcom county
    and feel free to leave your own jokes, pictures, comments, coffee pictures, local events and items for sale.  

                                 Just off State Street above Boulevard Park

   When I first moved to Bellingham---I did not know that we lived in Whatcom county.  I say
"Whatcom" on everything and thought it was for the presidential race.  Or part of a web sight address.  I finally broke down and asked my buddy what it stood for, and was very embarrassed to learn it was the county!

    Very soon I hope to add many links to local sights full of events and useful guides to the visitor or anyone moving to this area.  And sights that I use weekly.  This is the fourth time I have moved to Bellingham, and I love the area!  Everything about it.  From the many hikes, to the great pictures I find daily.  There is a ton to do here each and every day of the week.  And much of it is free.  This time around I got married, and am here to stay in the area for a long time.   I will not say for good, because moving is in both my wife and my blood for sure.  At the moment we are more than proud to call Fairhaven our home.  So many of my exploring blogs start in this great town. 

                                                             Dirty Dan Harris

 We are looking into moving a little down the road to Ferndale, but it is not in the cards just yet.  I try to show my love for this area in each post.  And I greatly enjoy taking pictures.  Every non joke picture in each blog, is my own.  I hope you enjoy them even half as much as I enjoy takin' them.   I have several of these displayed on my wall above our laptop.  And used to think some of them were extra nice.  Until I started looking at pages of local professional photographers.   

    

      My 2nd mission with these pages was to encourage my parents to visit this area.  It is a long trip from Wyoming and if they visit it will be a few month trip.  I hope that the pictures and exploring blogs will help them realize how great an area this really is.  Defiantly a whole new world from Wyoming!   This also goes to anyone on the invite list for our 2nd wedding next year.  Encouragement for the far away guests to want to visit.  

   
  This sight almost has 1,000 views and I hope to gain more local readers.  So please share the links if you enjoy what you see here.  My longer running blog series now has 10,000 views.   Feel free to check this sight out also at  www.wyomingjack.blogspot.com  And after I can prove a better reader base, I hope to add very reasonable local advertising to this blog.  VERY reasonable because this is a new sight.    But enough rambling, here are some of my favorite pictures from the area!   Please check out all of my posts for more great pictures!  Or better yet, git out there and explore!

                                                               Saturday Market

Great Falls Park

Old City Hall downtown

Near the Post Office Down town.

"Snow meets bay

Peace Arch

Downtown

Lake Whatcom

                                         

Dirty Dan Harris Days!

   Last Saturday we ventured just down the road to attend the Dirty Dan Festival in beautiful Fairhaven, Washington.  We saw a lot of shoppers in the town, but no real activities.  At first I was ready to call this a very lame event, but soon found out that the event started on Sunday, this year----Whoops!  Above is Dan's statue, forever keeping watch of the Village Green of his town.  Also a great place to snap a picture of him and yourself enjoying the view.   The Green is surrounded by great shops and partly covered.  It is usually the towns event hub.  The far wall doubles as an outdoor movie wall.   And the town plays family movies all summer starting in June.  I will report about these complete with a list of movies next month.  

   Sunday we tried again.   And enjoyed another sun filled day.  It has been a great trend in the past few weeks were we have OK weeks capped off with awesome sun filled weekends.    

  This festival celebrates the founder of Fairhaven.  And has been going on for six thousand years.                  
Minus about six thousand years, so for years now.  Fair warning--- for $20 bucks you can sample more clam chowder than you can imagine.  Clam chowder has a VERY distinct smell and we chose to stay away from this section of the festival.   At my last job, we had clam chowder soup on special every Friday.  When a new worker asked what the soup of the day was, I would take off the lid, and stand back.  The smell would instantly remind the new worker what the soup was.  All of this fun was in Wyoming, a land locked state -were fresh seafood is not an option.   The seafood tents are also near the beer garden.
   And now a little bit of history:
       Daniel Jefferson Harris was born on February 16, 1833 in New York.   He was a rebel, better to be left alone.  He was involved in at least four noted large legal scrapes.  Each time he was arrested, but bailed out by friends so never served any real jail time.    So the Dirty part was soon added to his name.   He was also a hard worker and great business man.  Around 1868 he acquired nearly 200 acres of land in what is now Fairhaven.  Much of this land was along this water front.  He quickly sold off the land that is now the town.   And later made a small fortune selling off the water front.   He was married for a year, before problems arose.  His wife and him separated, but made amends and stayed with each other.  Dan died in 1890 leaving an estate of about $180,000.    
By 1896, when Washington portions of Dan's estate was finally settled, Fairhaven property values had hugely dropped and his 5 heirs received only $33.93 apiece. 


    OK   wake up time!   Our daughter and I roamed down Harris street and hit incline down to the bay about time for the piano races to start.  

                   At the bottom of this hill are the 3 pianos to be pushed up the hill.

    The street is blocked off for the race and than the large crowd cheers on the runners.

  The Bellingham Terminal was our first stop of the day.  Many ships were in port to view and board. Filled with the crews who could answer any questions.  These boats are amazingly preserved and works of art even before the sails are lifted.   Several of them also had a sailing race later in the day. 

 Many vendors surrounded the terminal.  And bands offered more entertainment.  

 Displays and activities filled the inside of the terminal also. 

                           Replica of the Titanic to honor the 100 years since the tragedy.

                                                                We found Nemo!!


                                                         Rustic Coffee fueled stop ....

    This is in front of the depo leading people to Junction Coffee.  A great little shop that offers an awesome view with every coffee purchase!


 Back up the hill to the main festival.   All shops were open for business.  Musical groups kept everyone entertained in the Village Green were more vendors were out and benches were set up for all the guests.  

                                     A very busy face painter was one of the vendors.
  The Toy Garden also had a booth were kids could make there own toy.  Today's was some sort of water filled ball.   These were bouncing around all over the green.  Amazingly in all the time we spent at the festival, I saw no one get hit by the balls.  Later we roamed around the near toy store.  It is a great store with amazingly helpful and knowledgeable workers.  Rare in this day and age.  Off the green you can also roam the huge multi level book store.  Village Books is a great place to spend your time. With every type of book imaginable.  This store even has a machine that will print out the book you wrote!  Great staff and great prices also welcome you every trip.  Possibly the best thing about the store, is all of the activities.  They have free lectures, readings, open mic nights, workshops etc, something going on almost every day of the week.  The 2nd best thing is the owners of the store, it defiantly does not feel like a stuffy chain book store.   Plus the upper level houses a coffee shop if your caffeine level is running a little low.  Exit the bookstore without venturing outside, into a great gift shop.  

  People in authentic costume roam around the festival.  I believe the man in white is supposed to be Dirty Dan.

Down By The Bay

    So somewhat surprisingly my friends youngest child asked me to go exploring with him every day this weekend.  Somehow we never saw much rain.  Just lots of angry looking clouds.  All though I was sure while down by the boardwalk off and over the Bellingham Bay that we were going to get dumped on by heavy rain at best.  Possibly the rain dance before the hike was a bad idea?  We did not have to swim back to the house, and managed to stay dry.  Maybe Seattle got all the rain.  

                                                                                          

    On Friday we were going to go down by the bay, but somehow ended up on WWU campus.  He had a skateboard with him.   And the campus is full of paved areas and hills.  Hours of fun for sure.  I never have mastered a skateboard in the least.  Maybe because I tryed to pick it up to late in life.  Or because I grew up living on mostly gravel roads.   Youngsters pick things like this up way quicker, the same way there bones heal eight times faster than ours, luckily.   Unless you are still an advad milk drinker maybe.    He was soon zooming around me in circles, with his hands in his pockets.  Scaring the crap outta me, and oddly enough making me tired, just by observing.  

                                                                                                            

    The skies were dark and gloomy, but it was nice enough out for short sleeves.  A very friendly lady, walking her dog, talked with us for awhile.   She happened to have a Great Perinishe.  I think I just murdered the spelling.  My roomie many moons ago, had two of the dogs.  They are huge overly friendly hairballs for the most part.   His weighed 150 and 120 pounds.   And I recall waking up on his living room floor with a bad hangover and a furry pillow on both sides of me.  But they were very warm!   
     Saturday sent us wandering through the Fairhaven Park and than trails to the bay.   During a long stretching, gravely hill, my companion almost ate dirt--stomach planted on the skateboard.  Darting headfirst before I had a chance to utter what a bad idea that might be.   Somehow most of him stayed on the board.   But it was not an enjoyable enough ride to be tried again.  We took to the streets, easier riding access, down by the bus depo and to the bay.   Were some hungry seagulls helped us eat freshly decorated early Easter cookies.   

                                                

   Sunday kept threatening rain, but again not enough to mostion the whole walk at a time ever presented itself.  He kept asking about an outdoor adventure, but I kept pushing it back to let the clouds move on.   After getting snagged into some house hold cleaning, it was soon decided that it was time to brave the outdoors!   

    No skate board this time.  So we wandered the streets of Fairhaven and ended up on the wooden boardwalks.   The tide was way out so we crossed the first boardwalk and explored the rocks and tide pools.   Not finding to much past the norm.   We did catch and release some small crabs.   And I got some more groovy pictures.   The clouds quickly became very black and fierce looking.  And I was expecting to be very soaked before hitting home.                    

                                                                                                     

   A quick stop at the store for pie --the way I cook it, already made.   A great chocolate with chocolate mix.   Get some more non-winning games pieces and V line for home.   





Dirty Dan Harris