Bellwether and Bucatini: Bellingham, Washington

Late afternoon light filled the harbor. Our ample room at Bellingham’s Bellwether hotel had the solid refinement of a wealthy aunt’s guest room, complete with fireplace. It was the style to which we wish to be accustomed. From its balcony we looked out at Squalicum Harbor. There were countless sailboats, their closely packed masts forming a curry comb for the sky’s cerulean hide.

Accompanied by the earnest conversation of ducks and gulls, we walked along the harbor and were startled to see a bygone artifact: payphones. Two of them. We hadn’t seen payphones in decades, only their eviscerated hulks on rare occasions. Not only that, but the phones had dial tones. They worked!

We felt compelled to enter the Marine Life Center at water’s edge. Can a sea anemone see an enemy? At last, the question is answered: no. Sea anemones have no eyes, although they can sense light and dark. However, they have countless tentacles sensitive to all perturbations. We saw other local denizens, a frenzy of colors and shapes, including sea urchins, hermit crabs, and frosted nudibranchs (which sound like a breakfast cereal for nudists, but aren’t).

We entered the Red Light Kitchen & Bar. Their La Prisa, a lime daiquiri with mint, was vibrant with flavor. Their Asian cucumber salad and chicken wings were an ideal counterbalance.

Storia Cucina, next door, buzzed like a bee box. And boy did it have honey, in the form of focaccia with burrata and freshly made, perfectly cooked bucatini pasta, the one cognoscenti insist rule them all, done cacio e pepe.

Time to walk it off. The celebrated Whatcom Falls Park is a 241-acre complex of rushing streams, cataracts, and waterfalls, laced by arboreal trails. The air is scented by the breath of trees. The contrast with the city made clear how necessary nature is.

Big Rock Garden Park is less a park than an outdoor gallery. We saw bronzes, a concrete cubist torso, and an abstract gyre in stone, an auger shell in repose. We also contemplated “Peace,” Tracy Powell’s limestone sculpture of a mother reading to her two children nestled in her arms—maternity incarnate. We communed with her piece and memories of our young children, almost another species from their grown selves, came to mind.

Air as crisp as brand-new paper, we walked Taylor Dock Boardwalk, not land, not water, but betwixt. At one point we came upon a giant rock with a sign explaining it was actually an enormous lump of tin swept out of the vanished Pacific Steel Works cannery years back, corroded. In the distance: a frieze of frosted Olympic mountains.

There is an enormous, cryptic, metallic sphere in Waypoint Park called the Acid Ball that is nothing less than spheresome. A 400,000-pound relic salvaged from the bones of the Georgia-Pacific pulp mill, it has been reclad in a skin of glowing glass beads. It sits there like a fallen moon, reflecting the harbor light, industrial grit reimagined as a disco ball for the gods.

At Pickford Film Center—a non-profit art house cinema run in great measure by volunteers—we saw Marty Supreme. It’s one of the few theaters we’ve been in where the seating is so aggressively canted that even the tallest person before you, in a stovepipe hat, can’t block your view. No ersatz butter on their popcorn here.

Next morning we visited Cof& (From the Mountains to your Cup) which serves only Colombian coffee grown under shade. We lunched at Thai Maison where we had a dish rarely seen in this country (though common in Asia), pork jowl, which is like flank steak but more petite and tender. Wrapped in cabbage leaves and dipped in their tamarind sauce, its flavor and contrasting textures slapped us silly. As the light pivoted toward evening, we dined at Roe. Their Reuben Croquettes were clearly the offspring of an unlikely tryst between a Spanish tapas bar and Katz’s Delicatessen. Their Butter Lettuce salad with Rose Apple (a lovely, pink-fleshed apple we’ve never before encountered) was so vegetal that we finally broke the animal-vegetable threshold and began to photosynthesize.

Bellingham is REI meets grunge. Sartorially it is not a city of sharp creases, but baggy comfort. In much of downtown, cars park diagonally, giving the streets a serrated feel. The local dogs carry themselves with the poise of equal citizens. At night, the Mt. Baker Theater tower pulses with the powerful purple of a bioluminescent nudibranch.

Once, we might have begged for a pet squirrel. We would have named him Chuckanut. We squirreled home along spectacular Chuckanut Drive, Samish Bay at our shoulder. We left with full cheeks.

Plan your Bellingham, Washington, gastronomic getaway at bellingham.org.