Back to Whidbey

I’m a little behind on my posting.  We went up on May 23 to see the Coupeville Water Festival, but Molly has been filling my life with so much fun, that I haven’t time to post until now.  But it’s not a problem, so nobody has to talk to her about it.

  Coupeville has at least two festivals.  The water festival in May and a Mussel festival in March. If you like eating mussels, I highly recommend the march festival.  But it is may and so we went to the water festival.  We headed up on Friday night and the weather started to clear.  I headed down to the beach to watch the sunset and play with my camera.

More sunset photos

 

On Saturday the weather was clear and we headed into Coupeville.  Coupeville has a lot of charm and a great bakery. If charm doesn’t do it for you, go for the calories.  The houses are painted in Victorian splendor.  The main street is only two blocks long, but there is plenty to do for a morning or afternoon.

Additional photos of Coupeville

There were old cars, food booths, canoe races and lots of craft shops at the festival. But one of the high lights were the Indian dancers.  They were in full regalia. They were not in costume.  Costumes are when you dress up and pretend to be something you are not such as Halloween or your Sunday church clothes.  Regalia are the insignia and privileges you have earned the right to wear.

Given that the dancer’s grand parents were sent to jail for performing traditional ceremonies, they have certainly earned the right to do the dances now.  But they were not bitter and told great stories about their culture.  And if I remember correctly, they were the same tribe that traveled down by canoe and committed the Ebbey massacre about a mile away from Coupeville in the 1850s. I guess dancing with your enemies closes the circle.

Indian Dancers