Sparking Joy in Bellingham: A Fun Guide to Food, History & Science

While staying at the Thousand Trails in Birch Bay (that blog will be out in a couple weeks so subscribe below), we enjoyed several visits to a great little town not far away.

The town of Bellingham, Washington has a lengthy and rich history. It’s been settled for thousands of years by indigenous tribes, and the first European settlers arrived in the 1800’s. It’s settlers have been coal miners and loggers, and advanced by industrialization and the railroad. In it’s darker years, it had a history of exclusion and discrimination.

But modern day Bellingham is welcoming and has a rich culture of inclusion, as evident by signs in nearly every window welcoming all people, and a friendliness of a small town that greets you as though they’ve known you for years. There are tons of activities in and around the area for all times of year.

Our first trip to the town of Bellingham was to explore using one of several tours on our GPSMyCity app. We found easy parking downtown (pay by app or phone, and it’s reasonable, with some hours free!) and enjoyed lunch at a picnic table in town. Then we started our app tour and ended up walking 5 miles around the city, exploring the historical buildings, learning about settlers, strolling the marina, the park and seeing the river dotted with fisherman and taunted by seal catching far more fish than they were.

One of the must-see stops on our tour is what brought us back on the weekend. We popped into the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention after hearing about it on our tour to find out more. This museum was founded by two gentlemen, now in their 80’s but collecting electrical gadgets since they were around 10 years old. This amazing collection of electrical inventions blends in electrical knowledge and history of discoveries and inventors, but also has many hands on exhibits you can interact with. A weekend visit can also treat you to an amazing show with a huge Tesla Coil and a Faraday Cage, hosted by someone that reminds me of my high school science teacher that taught us what to do, and not to do, while also entertaining and educating us. It made for a great “field trip” for our home schooler, who enjoyed learning with hands on experiences!

We were lucky enough to cross paths with one of the founders who chatted with us and showed us a radio on display that was a duplicate of the first item he acquired that started him on this life-long quest. BJ got to interview him, so be sure to head over to our BarnesOnMove YouTube channel to check that tour out (and other videos)!

One of my favorite stops in the city that resulted in multiple visits was Chocolate Necessities. This location offers gelato, a variety of chocolate treats, espresso drinks, and sipping chocolate reminiscent of our many Food & Wine trips to EPCOT. While both locations have chocolates, only the downtown one has the gelato and beverages–if you stop in and if Meadow or David are there, tell them we sent you!

If you are looking for a bite to eat in town, I highly recommend Fiamma Burger! They have great food, reasonable prices, and dedicated Gluten Free fryers so my fellow Celiacs can rest assured that the fries, burger and bun are gluten free in all ways! I was so thankful for the extra steps they took to avoid cross contamination so I could enjoy the full experience, along with my guys!

If seafood is more your speed, head over towards the marina and find The Galley food truck (the link takes you to their Google map info to find them). They have fish and chips that looked and smelled delish, but when we saw the sign for lobster rolls, we decided to indulge the boys, and I just lived vicariously through them! They have a great little patio with tables and views of the marina.

We barely touched the surface of things to enjoy in this town, so we’d love to hear about your favorites, either in the comments, or tag us on social media so we can add them to our list for future visits, we don’t mind that our Google Maps are full of pins, I promise!

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