May Stop: Point Roberts, WA
We had such a unique experience this past month in Point Roberts, WA. We were living on a peninsula surrounded by the Salish Sea with the only land connection being a border between the town and Canada! The town is an exclave, so it’s not connected to the USA, but you can get to it by taking a boat, flying in with a plane, or driving through two borders. We had a tiny cottage, named the Gingerbread Cottage, all to ourselves for the whole month of May.
I truly loved Point Roberts with its multi-shaded green landscapes leading you through the trees and eagles swooping down from sandy cliffs to snatch ocean snacks.
I felt a sense of peace here that’s hard to explain. It felt like when you are holding your breath and your body is fully tensed up, and then you let out a large sigh of relief as your mind clears and your body relaxes.
Being surrounded by nature every moment we were there was like paradise for me.
Our cottage was specially located on Lily Point Marine Park, and the trail pictured on the right went from our front door to the park’s Main Loop Trail. I loved going on trail walks with the birdsong keeping me company and practicing yoga on the beach listening to the waves.
Being in this area also exposed us to a convocation of eagles. We counted up to 14 eagles at one time while we were walking through sandy tide pools.
There were quite a few trails throughout the five square miles that make up the Point, such as the Lighthouse Marine Park trail and the Monument Park trail.
My favorite was the Enchanted Forest Trail where gnomes, elves and fairies resided. It was an interactive trail that held miniature surprises and animated trees.
I personally loved just stepping off my porch into the forest and onto the many trails in Lily Point.
When we left our tree snuggled cottage, we were treated to open skies and horizons touching the Salish Sea. We would sip wine while watching the sun set over the ocean or grab a drink at the local tavern, Kiniski’s. The experiences in the Point were so special, I feel lucky to have gotten the chance to live somewhere so unique.
I had a blast writing two articles for the local monthly paper in the Point too. The All Point Bulletin was awesome to work with, and I’m very thankful they published my article about the beekeeper association in Point Roberts. They will also publish my second article about the garden club in July.
The beekeepers and gardeners were amazing teachers and sources for my stories. One of my favorite memories from this past month was getting to work in Tim Trudel’s apiary with him and his partner Janet Wilson. Over the course of three hours, they both taught me so much about honeybees and beekeeping that I wanted to take it up as a hobby. I 100% want to be a beekeeper now. I spoke with other wonderful beekeepers as well, such as Linda Marie Bruce, David Weldon, and April Svejkovsky. I hope you all enjoy the article about the Point Roberts Beekeepers Association as much as I enjoyed writing it.
The article about the garden club was also a blast to write because all of the members are great friends who love to get together and garden.
I got to sit down with the secretary Rhiannon Allen who taught me about the marine climate, the soil, noxious weeds, and their club. When I went to their big Plant and Garden Sale, I got to hang out and interview the other wonderful people in the club. Keep an eye out for that article on my website on July 1.
Speaking of clubs and organizations, the Point Roberts community is one of the most active groups of people I’ve lived around. There are multiple activities, meetings and events happening every day. I was very impressed, and it was fun to see everyone so involved. They have a very tight knit community which is interesting because it is a mix of second home owners from Canada, retired people who love the area, multigenerational families, and all kinds of fun people.
With it being a community along the border, I learned things that I don’t think I would’ve had the chance to learn anywhere else. For example, getting packages requires specific companies and parcel pickups. With crossing the border, you can apply for a Nexus card to bypass long lines. Gas prices were listed in Canadian dollars, and were apparently cheaper in the Point so people living in Tsawwassen would drive across the border to fill up on gas. There are lots of other little tid bits of knowledge I’m glad I got to acquire over the course of my time on the unique exclave.
And that was all just the time we spent there in the Point, not even counting in Canada yet!
Being along the border, we went into Canada daily to go to the gym, my yoga studio, grocery stores, coffee shops, and food places. Going across every day and getting my car searched wasn’t my favorite activity, but it was definitely worth it. My yoga studio Satya Yoga was amazing too if you need any recommendations for a studio there.
Other than those daily trips, we had some full day excursions as well.
We had so much fun exploring Vancouver and getting to go to Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. I’ve never seen a suspension bridge that massive before, and walking over it felt like the world was rocking. It was 450 feet long and 230 feet above the Capilano River. After walking across, we got to trail through the temperate rainforest with massive trees and hidden ponds.
Later that day, we went back into downtown Vancouver to Stanley Park where we walked through trees to get to the busy, bright beach. People were taking advantage of the sunny day and enjoying the park. Stanley Park is roughly 1,000 acres of maintained public park land. We didn’t rent bikes to tour the park, but I would definitely do that if we go again. Vancouver was a bright bustling city that we had fun exploring.
One of the days, we took a ferry across the sea to Vancouver Island where we played around in Victoria and surrounding areas. We docked and immediately found a cute coffee shop amidst all of the fun boutiques. We were able to resist going into all the shops, but there was a thrift market happening so you already know we had to go. Once we walked around the downtown areas, we hopped in the car to go to the Cathedral Grove two hours away. It was wild seeing 800 year old trees, and I was reminded of the time Connor and I spent in the Redwood National Park in California. Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park was in that area as well, so we hiked around the rushing falls and enjoyed the turquoise waters. We caught the ferry back to the mainland in the evening which was perfect timing to watch the sun set from the boat’s railing.
We spontaneously spent a day in Stevenson too. We drove into Washington on Mother’s Day and got to learn more about the cannery culture in the area. Salmon was a huge industry for the town, and we got to go to a local fish market on floating docks before eating at their local brewery.
Canada apparently has a ton of wine and grapes as well. I had no idea until we went, but there are wineries in every area of Canada that we visited. It was fun getting to hop from winery to winery, and to see the country side.
We got to try some rarer grape wines like the Bacchus and Siegerrebe which was really cool. The very first winery we went to was next to the Abbotsford Tulip Festival. The tulip festival was so beautiful, I’ve never seen so many tulips in my life. There are usually around five million tulips in their 28 acre field. It rained when we visited, but a couple of rain ponchos helped us enjoy the field for the afternoon.
And not only did we explore a lot of Canada, but we drove across the borders into Washington to hike in North Cascades National Park and explore Deceptions Pass State Park. These were separate days, but both were amazing! We did two steep hikes at the national park through the conifers, and I loved the stunning view of Diablo Lake at the top of a short trail called Thunder Knob trail. The skies were cloudy so we couldn’t see all of the glaciers and peaks, but the views and mountain country were still beautiful.
Deception Pass was a 180 from the alpine landscape of the Cascades since it was predominately oceanic cliffs and trails through the trees on the island.
The two famous bridges were amazing to cross after we had done a perimeter island hike and a summit hike. Then we grabbed lunch at the local shrimp shack before heading home.
We tried to maximize every week and weekend by packing them full of new places and experiences. The weather was perfect the whole time we were in Point Roberts with only four rainy days which I still loved because all the greens became even more vibrant.
It’s hard to include everything in this post, but hopefully I did our month of May justice with the highlights I did share with you. I would definitely visit again in the future, the peace I felt there was magical.
I actually wrote a poem to try to capture how I felt on one of my walks. I will include it in a separate post.
Thank you for reading and following along on my journey! I am including a ton of pictures below as well, my camera roll has over a thousand.
Princess Update:
She absolutely loved the heated wood floors in our Gingerbread Cottage, and she is very happy and healthy! Princess did however escape as we were packing up the AirBNB on the 31st and ran under the cottage. It was a nerve wracking half hour trying to lure her out, but I finally got her zipped her up safely in her car carrier where she got car sick three times on the drive to Oregon.
