Arlington flush with art, history and plenty to enjoy and explore

ARLINGTON — River and mountain views, historic buildings, farm tours, public art, good restaurants.

It has all that and more, but what makes Arlington an especially nice place to visit is the spirit of volunteerism one can sense all over town.

The all-volunteer Arlington Arts Council has made sure this community has sculptures, paintings, artistic welcome signs and banners, as well as Harry Engstrom’s historical murals.

Since the city’s centennial in 2003, the arts council has raised money to help fund the purchase of dozens of art pieces. (The council’s annual fundraiser is 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, at the Gleneagle Country Club.)

Many of the city’s outdoor sculptures are along the Centennial Trail, which wends its way through downtown and over the Stillaguamish River. Pick up an art walk guide at the visitor information office in Legion Park along Olympic Avenue near City Hall, and then head out on the trail.

Don’t miss the “Waterline” granite sculpture by Verena Schwippert, the “Rooted Embrace” steel sculpture by Debbi Rhodes, the metal sculpture “Raven Catches the Sun” by James Madison and, added recently, “Fishing the Stillaguamish,” a sculpture of an osprey by Dan Brown that sits on top of the Centennial Trail bridge over the Stillaguamish River at Haller Park.

On a recent afternoon, Ally and Justin Sites and their 16-month-old daughter, Saphira, walked along the Centennial Trail, enjoying the art work.

“I love my city,” Ally Sites said. “There’s a relaxed pace here. The art is cool and the parks are getting even better.”

City officials count on volunteers to help maintain and improve Arlington’s many parks, too.

• Haller Park, 1100 West Ave., at the confluence of the north and south forks of the Stillaguamish River, features a new playground, a refurbished boat launch and a link to the Eagle Trail that leads west to the city’s wetlands park, a good place to watch for birds and other wildlife.
• Twin Rivers Park, just off Highway 530 at the Lincoln Bridge on the east side of the confluence, features athletic fields, fishing access and a disc-golf course. From there one can look across the South Fork to Country Charm Park, a huge former dairy farm field along the river.

While you are downtown, check out:

• Arlington Hardware, now nearly 112 years old, is a community hangout. The 22,000-square-foot store, which sells “everything,” takes up half of a city block on Olympic Avenue and still retains its old, oiled fir floors. It has the feel of a curiosity shop, with its displays of old tools, old local sports photos and animal trophy heads. In the basement is the city’s 1950s-era bomb shelter.
• Arlington Fire Station 46 is home to a steel beam from the World Trade Center, which has been incorporated into a memorial that pays tribute to firefighters whose lives were lost Sept. 11, 2001. The memorial is in a covered alcove between the station’s bay doors at 137 N. Macleod.
• Rocket Alley Bar and Grill, 420 N. Olympic Ave., is a great place for lunch and bowling. It’s small, with only six lanes, but the place takes you back to the Northwest’s heyday of bowling.
• Also on Olympic Avenue you can find a number of great shops and other restaurants, including Bistro San Martin, perhaps Arlington’s best fine dining establishment, and the venerable Blue Bird Cafe, in business for nearly 60 years and great place to get a grilled cheese sandwich. The Stilly Diner, specializing in breakfast, is scheduled to open this month, also on Olympic Avenue.

Southwest of downtown, visit:

• Arlington Municipal Airport, 18204 59th Drive NE, home of the nationally renowned and volunteer-supported Arlington Fly-In held each July, and home to businesses that offer airplane, ultralight and glider pilot training.
• Skookum Brewery, 7925A 59th Ave. NE, features a nice tasting room.
• Nutty’s Junkyard Grill, 6717 204th St., is a fun place in a former garage. Along with great burgers, feast your eyes on the displays of license plates, the back end of a rusty-looking old truck, gas pumps, oil pumps, a parking meter and an old battery charger.
• Stillaguamish Valley Pioneer Museum, 20722 67th Ave. NE, is open for limited hours Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Even if the volunteer-run history museum is closed, stop by to see the large hand-carved cedar relief map of the Stillaguamish River watershed as it was in 1910. Holding up the roof beams of the shelter over the map are cedar story poles that tell the salmon story of the Stillaguamish people.

Just outside of town:

• Tour the farms (think pumpkins and corn mazes right now) on the Red Rooster Route, including Foster’s Produce &Corn Maze, Biringer Farm, Garden Treasures, Ninety Farms (lambs), Bryant Blueberry Farm, Chuck’s Nursery, Red Ranch Berry Farm, Mystic Mountain Nursery and Rhodes River (horse) Ranch and its restaurant. Not officially part of the tour, but equally interesting are the Fruitful Farm and the Outback Kangaroo Farm on Highway 530 and the Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians’ Banksaver Nursery with its stock of native plants, near Bryant.

*Also north of the city is the tribe’s Angel of the Winds Casino and the world-renowned Pilchuck Glass School.

Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.

Tourist in your own town

In each of our local cities, we have tourist attractions often overlooked by the people who live in this region. Have you been a Tourist in Your Own Town? This is the 22nd in a series of monthly explorations of our hometowns. For other Tourist in Your Own Town stories, go to www.heraldnet.com/tourist.