THE PLAIN DEALER SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 1996 Cares evaporate on islands of Puget Sound By STEVE SILK HARTFORD COURANT EASTSOUND, Wash. With its endless sweeps of evergreens and tiny harbors, everyday concerns seem miles away from the rocky San Juan Islands in Washington's Puget Sound. After all, this was the spot a wealthy shipbuilder chose as his retreat when a doctor told him he had only a few months to live. Decades later, the shipbuilder was still enjoying his island idyll. are scores of San Juans, but the islands most visited are those served by the Washington State Ferry system.
Boats call daily on Shaw, Orcas, Lopez and San Juan, and each has its appeal. San Juan is the most bustling, with aptly named Friday Harbor a mecca for weekenders from Seattle and for visitors from all over. Lopez, with its flat farmland, is a favorite for bicyclists. Shaw is rural, with few places for visitors to stay. But Orcas is, for many, the superlative San Juan: This, the largest of the islands, boasts the most coastline and the highest mountain.
On this butterfly-shaped island you'll find rolling hills, handsome farmsteads, tiny hamlets huddled at the head of rockribbed inlets and abandoned orchards engulfed by forest. And there's Madrona Point, where the Lummi Indians were said to have buried their dead. Today it's a lonely place: The wind swirls through the twisting limbs of ruddy madrona trees, and sun-bleached, wave-washed driftwood rattles like old bones. Pink clusters of sweet peas brighten the clearings, but the happy colors offer no escape from the haunting sense of solitude that comes from the churning blue sea and smoky gray sky, and the distant islets that seem suspended between them. Out on the water, boaters bob on a sea corrugated with rolling swells.
All around them rise the get jagged ridges and smooth knobs of scores of islands, and it's easy to imagine the San Juans as the peaks of some antediluvian mountain range. In fact, that's 800 just what they are. In the last ice age, more than 10,000 years ago, face. the weight of grinding glaciers caused an entire mountain range or to sink beneath the waters of Pu- Tips on visiting The easiest way to reach the San Juan Islands from Seattle is to drive north to Anacortes, the main ferry terminal for the islands. The drive takes about two hours.
Departures are every couple of hours or so, but not all ferries dock at all four of the islands served. Extra ferries are employed in summer to handle heavy crowds. Ferry routes and departure times vary by season; for a schedule, write to the Washington State Department of Transportation, Washington State Ferries, Colman get Sound. The peaks are all that remain. But there are lots of them.
A count at low tide tallies nearly rocks, reefs, islands and other features poking above the surAt high tide, the number shrinks to about 450. Ofthose, 200 so are significant or sizable enough to warrant a name. The classic 7-night cruise. Now available in convenient 3-night packages. St.
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'Accommodations are fairly limited in the San Juans. There are campgrounds, bed-andbreakfasts, inns and a resort or two, but they fill quickly, especially on summer weekends. If your plans call for visiting the San Juans in July or August, make reservations. For information, write to the San Juan Islands Visitor Information Service, Box 65, Lopez Island, Wash. 98261; or call (360) 468-3663.
Some of those names are evocative, almost cerily so. Cemetery Island, Smallpox Bay, Barren Island, Deadman Island, Skull Island, Massacre Bay and Victim Island all either on or near Orcas earned their names during the years the Haida Indians of British Columbia staged slaving raids on the peaceful Lummis, who were perhaps the first summer visitors to frequent the San Juans. The Lummis spent the sunny (relatively) and rain-free (relatively) months of May to September feasting on seafood, deer and berries before returning to the mainland to wait out the wet, gray winter. The Lummis' old lands can be surveyed from the stone tower that crowns Mount Constitution, at 2,407 feet the highest peak in the San Juans. The mountain is the centerpiece of Moran State Park, and visitors who would rather not hoof it all the way to the top can drive up the narrow twisting road that leads to the summit.
Even if you drive, it's worth taking a walk somewhere in Moran. Trails lead to waterfalls and lakes, leading the way through incredibly lush forests carpeted with ferns and canopied with western hemlock, lodgepole, cedar and sitka spruce. On exposed ridges you'll find artfully sculpted junipers 'shaped by years of harsh winds. The mountaintop itself is a treasure trove of windswept trees, but most visitors to the summit turn their attention to the 50-foot sandstone block tower that sticks like a hatpin out of Constitution's stony pate. Kids in particular love to charge up its flights of stairs and peek out its narrow windows.
But the best view is on top, where visitors are sometimes silenced by the panorama of islands ringed by distant mountain ranges to the south, the rugged and snowy Olympics; to the east, the Cascades, crowned by Mount Baker; to the north, the peaks of British Columbia's Coastal Mountains. When your eyes finally drift back to earth, there are the twinkling Twin Lakes, beckoning from an expanse of green deep in the heart of Moran. The park, one of the largest state parks in Washington, is the legacy of Robert Moran, a wealthy Seattle shipbuilder who retired to Orcas when a doctor informed him that he had but a few months to live. Instead, Moran lived for decades on the island, amassing the huge tract of land that became the park and building an 1 elaborate mansion that is today the island's swankest resort, Rosario. South County's charm special in Rhode Island By STEVE SILK HARTFORD COURANT NARRAGANSETT, R.I.
On a map, Rhode Island's southwestern tier is called Washington County. But in L'il Rhody, everyone calls it South County. Whether you think of it as Washington, because of its historic villages and country lanes, or as South, because of its warm, gracious ways, the huddle of towns squeezed between the Connecticut state line and Narragansett Bay constitute more than a mere county. They form a state, or at least a state of mind. From the patrician shores of Watch Hill to the dune-backed beaches of Ninigret and the wild and woolly sands of Narragansett, South County celebrates life with a style all its own.
If you have just a single day, you can hit some of the state's best beaches, see a piece of its pre-colonial history and take in a charming town or two. If you have a week or more, you still won't come close to seeing all there is to see in this compact corner of the nation's smallest state. You'll find all kinds of beach scenes here. For a honky tonk, it's hard to beat Misquamicut; right next door at Watch Hill, you'll find one of the state's mostmannered places. The rest fall somewhere in between.
Naturalists might opt for Ninigret, a three-mile stretch of barrier beach strung between the Atlantic and Ninigret Pond, one of the state's largest coastal ponds and a prime spot for viewing waterfowl. Dramatic coastal views are abundant in Narragansett. The long rockbound stretch of shoreline between Scarborough Beach and the town beach is shelved with a rugged expanse of pink granite. Anywhere along here but most especially at Hazard Rock or Black Point are dramatic views of rugged rocky shoreline and sprawling waterfront estates. At low tide, depressions in the bedrock become tide pools and invite legions of young explorers.
Visiting South County Rhode Island's South County is filled with landmarks. If you're planning to visit the Kenyon Grist Mill, phone ahead to try to arrange a tour. Call the mill at (401) 783-4054. For information about Smith's Castle, call (401) 294-3521. For general information, contact South County Tourism Council 4808 Tower Hill Wakefield, R.I., 02879; or call 1-800- 548-4662.
Here, too, are fishermen, casting off the rocks for anything they can catch. Down the coast at Galilee, near Point Judith, fishing is a way of life. One of the biggest fishing fleets in New England calls this harbor home, with more than 200 boats combing the nearby Atlantic for everything from lobster to shark. The docks are lined with working fishing vessels, and much of the waterfront is bathed in the reek of bucketloads of skate a popular lobster bait fermenting in the sun. Still, Galilee is nearly as popular with tourists as with fishermen.
Its picturesque harbor attracts photographers, and seafood restaurants here serve justcaught fish and lobster to hundreds of sightseers and to those waiting to board the ferry for nearby Block Island, South County's farthest-flung outpost. The peninsula's southernmost point is home to the Point Judith Light House, which warns ships of the dangerous offshore rocks. Even though there has been a lighthouse here since 1810, dozens of ships have gone down in a stretch of ocean perilous enough to be called the Cape Hatteras of New England. Not far offshore, a German U-boat sank the S.S. Black Point in May 1945, in what became the last battle of the North Atlantic.
The U-boat was sunk, in turn, near Block Island. Just across the way, in Jerusa- lem, charter boats go out for tuna and other game fish. Sometimes Japanese sushi buyers are waiting at the docks, ready to buy a promising catch, pack it in ice and ship it off to Tokyo. Back on dry land, away from the sensory delights of the coast, explorations of South County turn toward the past. One of the most intriguing pockets of bygone days can be found at the Kenyon Grist Mill in the tiny Hamlet of Usquepaugh, hard by the Queens River.
Here, enclosed amid a postand-beam building constructed with massive timbers, whirling 5- foot wheels of granite grind corn, wheat, rye and other grains to flour. One of the specialties is flour for Johnnycake, which along with clams known as quahogs, are one of Rhode Island's unique contributions to the culinary world. Johnnycake, the pancakelike cornmeal concoction is believed to have evolved from a saddlebag snack packed by Colonial-era travelers and known as a journeycake. One of the mill's owners, Paul Drumm III, occasionally leads impromptu tours and explains the workings of the old-fashioned machinery with infectious enthusiasm. The mill dates to 1886, when it was built to replace an older mill on the other side of a nearby dam.
Also nearby is Smith's Castle, a 1678 plantation home on the shores of Narragansett Bay, now open to visitors; it was built on the site of an earlier trading post established about 1636. In the days of King Philip's War, the trading post was the rallying point for a group of colonists from around New England who launched a sneak attack on an Indian encampment in Great Swamp. The attack turned murderous when the colonists killed women and children in what was to became one of the bloodiest Indian battles ever fought in Rhode Island. A monument in the swamp commemorates the massacre. An Indian counterattack left the trading post in TAKE OFF! AMERICA WEST ORLANDO NONSTOP CLEARWATER BEACH NONSTOP 199 '229 DAYS INN LAKE BUENA VISTA RESORT HOLIDAY INN SUNSPREE RESORT INCLUDES ROUNDTRIP AIR, 2 NIGHTS HOTEL, plus FREE admission to Church INCLUDES ROUNDTRIP AIR TO TAMPA, 2 NIGHTS HOTEL at this white sand Street Station, where you'll enjoy culinary delights and shopping pleasures.
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