Kristin Pittman: Camping, Cows and Creatures

A couple of weekends ago was spent camping with friends north of Seattle at Larrabee State Park. The park is located on the rocky coast of Bellingham Bay and we had easy access to the water, farmland to the south and the convenience of a city to the north. Since it's a state park there's not a lot of privacy but there are showers and flushing toilets, and trains...

I purposely picked our camping location due to its vicinity to the dairy we get our milk and cheese from at the grocery store, Golden Glen Creamery. They are an "all natural" farm instead of organic which means that they will treat their cows with antibiotics or penicillin when they are ill. But that is it and otherwise follow organic standards. They don't get inspected like an organic label, but the Jensen family who owns the farm and their 60+ cows treat their animals well, let them roam freely in pasture and create a sustainable, quality product that I enjoy supporting.

We dropped by the farm and their store on Saturday morning and picked up a few types of cheese, chocolate and strawberry milk and a honey butter that went so well with our corn at dinner. It was fun to bring my friends there who maybe don't think about where their milk comes from and learn about the options.

We also happened upon the tiny town of Edison where they have a couple cafes, bakeries, cheese, meat and wine shop and other specialty shops. We enjoyed coffee and pastries at a cafe called Tweets, particularly a rhubarb infused coffee cake. A couple of doors down we savored a glass of wine with cheese and and a sampling of Salumi salamis. And next door to that, we couldn't resist the smell of the bakery where we picked up a couple of rolls and cookies for later. Well we ate the cookies right away and they were yummy!

While I didn't take any pictures of our camping food (standard camping fare of hot dots, hamburgers and especially tender chicken and steak kebabs), I did capture a lot of creatures when we ventured down to the beach. We got to climb around rocks where purple starfish were basking in shallow pools, and tiny crabs and snails were sneaking around trying to stay away from all of the little kids.