Distance: 80 miles
Time to complete: 5+ hours
Sunday was a beautiful and warm winter day here in Seattle. A meetup group had planned a ride to Vashon Island from Seattle and my friends Will and Carson pinged me to see if I wanted to tag along.
Instead of meeting the group at a Starbucks in West Seattle, we decided to meet them at the Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal where we would catch the ferry to Vashon Island. It turns out that the group changed their start time, so they didn’t show for the ferry we were taking. No worries for us, we knew where we were going and were fine going alone.
The fun thing was, we weren’t the lone motorcycles waiting for the ferry 🙂 After we arrived, about a dozen Harley riders showed up.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, motorcycles get priority boarding on ferries and they line up in front of all the waiting cars. This makes it very easy to walk around taking in the amazing collection of two-wheeled displays of chrome and steel, fiberglass and leather.
Just before we started boarding, another group of about fifteen bikers rode up. They were on cafe racers and British bikes, mostly.
It turns out the Harley riders were headed to Southworth (bypassing Vashon Island for the pennisula), but the hipsters on the cafe racers were headed to Vashon with us.
Our first destination on Vashon was the Hardware Store Restaurant. The food is great. I had a variation on Eggs Benedict using corned beef and grilled beets – quite unique and very tasty !!
After that, we rode around a bit, ending up at Point Robinson park. The meetup group had shown up, stopping to eat at the Hardware Store, too. We never joined them, instead staying on our own schedule which included another ferry ride to Point Defiance.
The waterfront area between Point Defiance and the Tacoma Port was packed with folks, custom cars, and lots of motorcyclists. We made our way around the port using Hwy 509 and then jumped on I-5 to head back to Seattle.
Notes:
(1) There is no charge to take the ferry off the island.
(2) Only one ferry boat services the Point Defiance run, so wait times can be longer than expected.
Looks like a fun day ride! I enjoyed driving and taking the ferry to Vashon from Tacoma some years ago.