Something to Do This Summer
There is this scene in a movie I remember watching with my wife a few years ago where the romantically involved couple goes out to a park in San Francisco, sits under a beautiful tree as the sun is setting, and watches an old movie on a makeshift screen with hundreds of others. I remember telling my wife that watching old movies in a park at night would be a pretty great way to spend an evening.
So, you can imagine my thrill when I found out last year that this is precisely what they do in Fairhaven (the south side of Bellingham) on Saturday nights throughout the summer. And its free (all the Mennonites just sat up). You can find out about the schedule and the movies they play at this link (http://fairhaven.com/content/2009_summer_movies). And if you are going to look into doing it, let me be the first to suggest you take along your family and do a couple of things beforehand…
1. Park your car in Fairhaven and take the path that leads to the boardwalk over part of Bellingham Bay. The walk ends at Boulevard Park where you can get a coffee or something tasty at Woods Coffee in the park. If you ride your bike, you can keep going through the park and catch the trail that goes into Downtown Bellingham (it’s about a 2-3 mile ride one way and pretty easy on a packed gravel trail). At the end of your ride, you can reward yourself with an ice cream at one of the best ice cream shops in the western hemisphere – Mallards Ice Cream on Railroad Avenue. It’s easy to find and fabulous (I recommend the cinnamon flavor in a waffle cone).
2. Ride your bike or walk back to Fairhaven in time to eat at Stanellos (a great Italian restaurant that’s a local tradition) or Dos Padres (outstanding Mexican food) before you go to the movie on the Fairhaven Village Green. But, get there early to get a seat.
3. Alternatively, if you are hot and you want to just sit and watch the kids cool off, go to the water park in Fairhaven Park first then to dinner and then to the movie.
Take my advice here. You won’t regret it. Bellingham is more than a mall, people. You can thank me later.
Jeff
#1 from lorne w on June 07, 2009
When I was a kid I never would have imagined an evangelical psstor (a Mennonite pastor?) encouraging us to go to a movie - let alone teaching our kids to do the same. Mind you, I’d have had a hard time imagining myself being 66 years old and the rapture not having happened. One of the “threats” was that it might happen while I sneaked to a movie and then where (literally) would I be? As a teen I literlly fled from a sci-fi movie because of this fear and guilt.
The Fairhaven movie night sounds like lots of fun.