When my family and I decided to move to Bainbridge, Washington from Manhattan, New York, to say we were taken aback by the towns beauty was an understatement. Bainbridge Island is a somewhat quaint little settlement that is accessed from Seattle via ferry. The scenery is absolutely amazing and with the crime rate being so low, I thought it would be a perfect place to raise our two children and escape the harsh city living.
While there were a number of beautiful homes available on the market, my wife and I decided to build our home from the ground up. However, we didn’t realize some of the challenges we may face when building on the island. As beautiful as the scenery may be, it most times is drowned out by sheets of rain as it rains quite often on this little island. That made getting a lot of our building completed a bit of a challenge. Especially when it came to doing our roof. We searched roofing contractor Bainbridge WA and found a really great contractor to handle our roofing however, it just took quite a while due to the weather.
Nevertheless, once the building was complete, we finally began to settle into our new home. That was over six years ago, and we’ve been loving it ever since. We even began a small vegetable garden that supplies most of our meals daily. Being city folks, gardening wasn’t something either one of us was familiar with. But with a bit of research we came across lots of ideas and gardening tips to help us get started.
Aside from our garden, we noticed that many of the locals have chicken coops in their backyards. Well, as they say, “When in Rome,” right? So, yeah, you guessed it. We too got ourselves a chicken coop. That is something I never could even imagine doing much less believe I actually did but it was one of the best things I could have done. While we do not eat our chickens, eating eggs from our own free range hormone free chickens never tasted any better.
Although many of our friends and family thought us to be crazy moving here, we couldn’t be any happier. Even our children, ages now 11 and 13 love it as well. The question we always get asked is what is there to do in Bainbridge? While the island may be small, there is plenty to do here. The Bainbridge Museum of Art is really great. There’s plenty of hiking and camping as well.
Like with any place you live, it is what you make of it and what you consider to be fun. I will say that if you like to party hard and looking for a vibrant nightlife, this may not be the place for you. However, if you are like me and my family and want a slower paced lifestyle with more family oriented and purposeful activities, then you’ll feel right at home here!