One of the many petty nuisances about the pandemic has been the chaos it has wreaked on our travel. Sometimes we’ve been able to substitute with a trip that ended up being just as special (eg our trip to Utah last summer where we got to spend time with Shelley and Mason rather than our original trip to England). For other trips, we’re still in the process of “putting it off” (eg our trip to Florida that was supposed to happen on Spring Break 2020, then Christmas 2020, then Spring Break 2021, and now hopefully it will happen in July 2021). Even with all the shifting and changing, we have continued to try and find new destinations that are a short distance away that are good for a long weekend; in May 2020, we took a weekend trip to Port Angeles and the Olympic National Park and in October we took a weekend trip to Leavenworth to enjoy some Bavarian food and spirits. We ended up not going anywhere over Winter Break, but we did find a place we wanted to try when we saw pictures on Facebook from some friends – Beach Haven Resort on Orcas Island.
Based on the pictures and stories from our friends the Martin-Crowley family, we decided to look up Beach Haven. It is a resort that was begun in 1939 and still has a very mid-century rustic feel. While they do have a website, they don’t do online reservations – you have to call and leave a message and they get back to you. They also have no WiFi and the cell signal is from Canada (at least the one that we’re picking up with AT&T). They are the kind of place where you can’t even get summer reservations because they give first dibs to their returning summer guests and they are fully booked June-Sept a year in advance.
So….with mid-winter break coming up in February, we decided in December that we would give it a shot. We called 30 days out (which is when reservations open due to COVID restrictions) and we were able to reserve a 2-bedroom cabin for a long weekend (Friday-Tuesday) for the beginning of the break. We made our ferry reservations and we’ve been looking forward to coming and did some research about some hikes that we could take and hoping that we wouldn’t be met with a week of solid rain (which is quite likely in February around here).
Fast forward to the week before break and Western Washington found itself on snow-watch. We were all watching our weather apps constantly to see if we would get a snow day. We had finally bought sleds for the kids last Fall and they have been wanting to use them ever since. We were all initially disappointed that instead of getting a snow day on Friday, we were met with solid green grass at school. As it turns out, that was a blessing in disguise for us.
Friday afternoon, the kids and I finished school, swung by the house to pick up Emily, and headed to Anacortes to catch the ferry to Orcas. Our ferry was 30 minutes late, which meant we had an extra 30 minutes cooped up in the car – and that we didn’t actually get to Beach Haven until almost 9:30. But we were just in time. We unloaded the car and got the kids in bed and then the snow began…
We woke up on Saturday morning completely snowed in. We only had about 4 inches at first, but the roads are quite remote out here and it was clear that they would be treacherous. It kept snowing throughout the day Saturday and we ended up with about 7.5 inches. But that didn’t matter to us because we came prepared with 2.5 days worth of food – and of course, we brought the sleds! So we got up, got our snow gear on, and had a blast playing in the snow – including sledding down some hills here on property that are normally roadways.
We spent Saturday and Sunday alternating between playing in the snow, putting together a puzzle, playing the many games we brought with us, reading, and watching some movies that we downloaded (Hook, The Three Musketeers, My Cousin Vinny, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding). It was so beautiful to be in the middle of this old growth forest in a tiny rustic cabin as we snuggled up with hot chocolate and fire in the wood-burning stove. We even ended up using the front porch as a refrigerator when our bottle of wine was too tall for the fridge in the cabin!
By Monday, we were going to run out of food – but like so much else for us this weekend, the timing worked out perfectly. The temperatures began rising Sunday evening and the snow was replaced by rain. By mid-morning on Monday, the temperature plus the rain had cleared enough snow to make the roads usable again (at least with our AWD Subaru – not sure that the Fit would have made it) and we were able to drive in to Eastsound and buy some lunch from the Brown Bear Baking Company and some salmon for dinner at the Island Market.
When we made this reservation, we were excited about seeing Orcas Island and having a weekend of exploring. Who new that serendipity would intervene and we would have the perfect four days of being “trapped” in a Winter Wonderland! This has truly been a magical weekend and it couldn’t have been better timed. We are grateful for the Robs for introducing us to such a great getaway. Maybe one day we’ll make it back here in the summer, but for now, this was truly enchanting.
Now…where should we go for Spring Break 👀😂…?
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