When you visit Orcas Island there will be several places you’ll seek out in town:
- A basic grocery store – Island Market
- A local/organic/non-GMO grocery store – The Co-op
- A pharmacy and place for everything from cheap readers and Depends to cards, toys, and gifts – Ray’s Pharmacy
- A coffee place – Enzo’s
- A charming, deeply satisfying, quintessentially Orcas shop and coffee place – Darvill’s Bookstore
- A post office – on the same street as Enzo’s
- A church – there are plenty right in town (Community, Episcopal, Catholic, SDA, and more)
- A bakery – Brown Bear Baking across from Ray’s
- A place for quick outdoor needs – Orcas Outfitters next to Ray’s
- A place for local advice – the Chamber of Commerce across from Ray’s
- A cheap place to get quick food – nonexistent except for kid burritos at Chimayo underneath the Odd Fellows Hall on Haven Road past Windermere Real Estate
- Quick, not-so-healthy food – the hot case at Island Market
- A fresh, healthy lunch – The Kitchen across from The Village Green
- A Mexican restaurant – Mijitas across from Enzo’s
- A breakfast spot – Island Skillet beyond Mijitas
- A hamburger and fries place – The Lower Tavern (kids can’t go in so just get it to go)
- A movie theater – Sea View Theatre across from the post office
Beyond these basic “needs,” there are various restaurants, gift shops, and places to eat.
There’s something for everyone here
But let’s go back to the fifth point – Darvill’s Bookstore (I have no ads on this blog – I’m beholden to no one!). Darvill’s just is an Orcas Island institution. Wait, that sounds institutional; it is anything but. Darvill’s is one of those places you go in and you might not come out of for a few hours. You lose yourself there in all the eye-catching books and uber-interesting things. It’s right in the center of town, and it also hangs over the water, so you walk in from the quaint charm of the street and into the quaint charm of its warm, peaceful, engaging surroundings, which happen to overlook the ethereal Sound. There’s just something about it. It stirs your mind with fresh, new ideas and brings out your creative thinking. You go in there pulled by all the eye candy and come out excited about new ways of doing life, doing art, doing everything.
Feathers and Seeds by local author Thor Hanson; he speaks at plant seminars on San Juan Island
Darvill’s captivated us, as I assume it does most tourists, the first time we walked around town. That was in 2005 when I was pregnant with our first child. We had decided to vacation on Orcas Island during my husband’s summer break from teaching. (He was an accounting professor for 20+ years.) One morning, we left our cabin at the West Beach Resort for a walk into town along the Enchanted Forest Road. Aptly named, our memories still sparkle with the magic we felt that morning as we walked under the canopy of trees that sheltered us from the light morning rain. It was like being in a real-life storybook. We ducked into Darvill’s, our destination, and hovered over the ocean with our warm coffee drinks, cozied from the outside elements by the store’s warmth and charm.
Andrew Henry’s Meadow, one of my favorite children’s books, was written in the ’60s when the author lived on Waldron Island
Since then, we tell everyone about it.
Jenny, the owner, is devoted to it. She displays books by local authors and hosts talks by international ones. It’s like a connection to all of the outside world while staying in a homey little womb of a place.
This is co-written by Joe Gaydos, VMD PhD, Director of the SeaDoc Society here on Orcas. He travels the world doing biological research and volunteers as our animal shelter’s vet.
It just feels good
