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Into the Skagit

Day 7 · Completed

Mount Vernon

Washington

Mount Vernon’s riverfront and regional cancer care

This day on the route

Date
The day
Walking
Walked
8.3 miles

Day 7, September 13: 8.3 miles walked, from Bertelsen Winery into Mount Vernon. The riverfront is background, not an event venue.

Route overview, not turn-by-turn directions.

Painted riverfront with brick buildings behind a concrete flood wall, an ochre railing in the foreground and blue mountains beyond the bend.
Illustration inspired by Mount Vernon, Washington.

On September 13, in rain for the first time, Jeana walked 8.3 miles into Mount Vernon and slept in her tent on the lawn of St. Joseph Catholic Church. Its riverfront combines public space with flood protection.

Mount Vernon’s incorporation records place the city’s formation in 1890. Its modern waterfront tells a different civic story: a permanent floodwall and levee were developed alongside a pedestrian promenade and Riverfront Park. Flood protection and a place to spend time beside the Skagit River were planned together.

The city describes a 24-foot-wide promenade and a 30,000-square-foot plaza, part of its effort to bring public life back to the river while protecting downtown from flooding. Jeana walked in on a wet day, the first rain of the walk, in rain gear with a cover over the pack. Nobody at the food co-op could put her up, so she slept in her tent on the lawn of St. Joseph Catholic Church, where she had waited for the end of the evening mass to ask.

Skagit Regional Health’s Cancer Care Center at 307 South 13th Street provides care for residents of Skagit, Island and north Snohomish counties. Its service area reaches beyond the river city to the surrounding counties, another regional connection in a place shaped by the Skagit.

From the road

Rain for the first time, and a man who stopped to ask if she was all right

It rained on her for the first time. Not heavily — but it had come down all night, and she walked the whole day in rain gear with a cover over the pack. She was especially glad of the Van Dams that morning: an early start, a breakfast with a great deal of protein in it, and Becky dropping her back on the route at half past nine. It was Becky who suggested the Skagit Valley Food Co-op as a place to find a bed in Mount Vernon.

Seven and seven-tenths of a mile took her to the Skagit Valley Food Co-op in Mount Vernon, with a few more still to go into the middle of town. Somewhere along the way she worked out that she is now closer to the Canadian border than she is to Seattle.

A couple at the co-op saw the pack and asked what she was doing. She told them about joining the donor registry, and about Jada, and that she relies on other people’s generosity for her food and her bed. They told her to go and get something to eat and they would pay for it. She had a hot meal out of it, which after a wet morning is not nothing.

The thing she wanted written down happened about halfway through the day. She was crossing an overpass, heading for the old Highway 99, when an old Chevy truck pulled up on the far side of the road. She walked over to it. The man behind the wheel wanted to know whether she was all right — that was the whole of it. There was a young black labrador on the seat beside him. She told him what she was doing and that she was fine, and he smiled and told her she would be going to heaven, and drove on.

Nobody at the co-op was able to put her up, and the places she rang had nothing either. She was walking towards a Methodist church she had found on a map when she passed St. Joseph Catholic Church in the middle of its evening mass. She waited for the end of it, and asked Father Carlos whether there was room for a tent. He said there was.

I was deeply moved by his simply taking the time to be sure a fellow citizen was okay.

Jeana Moore
A black and tan puppy with large upright ears sitting on a stone-tiled floor beside an open cardboard box of food cups, looking off to one side.A wet two-lane road running away between fields under a low grey sky, the tarmac shining with rain.A narrow creek of still grey water running between long grassy banks towards a concrete highway bridge raised on pale pillars.A green road sign on two posts reading Swinomish Tribe, Next Right, beside a fish emblem, with cars and a pickup on a multi-lane highway behind it under an overcast sky.Flat brown farm fields and a strip of long grass beside a wet road edge, with dark forest and a cloud-topped ridge beyond and power lines across a grey sky.A muddy farm track curving across a harvested field of yellowed stubble towards a line of trees, distant farm buildings and low hills hung with cloud.Clusters of small red rose hips hanging from thin arching branches among green and yellowing leaves.A long straight road with a wide paved shoulder and a metal guardrail running towards the horizon, with flat fields, power poles and a distant farmhouse off to the left under heavy cloud.A hand-painted sign reading Honey and Art, with a small bee drawn inside the O, fixed to the grey-green gable end of a wooden shed.A tall sculpture of a horse and rider built from welded scraps of rusted metal and mesh, standing on a grass verge beside a highway under a grey sky.A small yellow flower on a thin stem, framed inside a loop of dry, bleached plant stem against gravel and moss, with a second flower behind.A loop of dry, bleached plant stem seen face-on frames two small yellow flowers, one sharp on a thin green stem and one blurred behind it, over gravel, moss and green leaves.
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A green road sign on a timber pole reading Entering Mount Vernon.Across a wide paved road with yellow lane markings, a cleared lot holds a red tractor, white bales, a traffic cone, mailboxes on a metal stand and a tall leafy tree, with a dark wooded hill beyond under a gray sky.A dark, tree-covered hill rising behind a cleared lot of dry grass and brush piles, seen across a dark paved road with yellow lines and overhead wires.The front of a low beige fire station lettered Mount Vernon Fire Station No 1, with five bay doors, one standing open on a pickup truck and a fire engine.Lettering carved into the pale stone front of an old building, reading Mt. Vernon 23 I.O.O.F., October 23, 1882.
Distance walked
8.3 miles
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United States — NMDP

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NMDP — Join the registry · checked Sep 1, 2026

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Sources

Local history and background reading for this stop.

  1. Events leading to city incorporation — checked Sep 5, 2026
  2. Downtown and waterfront master plan — checked Sep 5, 2026
  3. Cancer Care Center, Mount Vernon — checked Sep 5, 2026
  4. Finding a blood stem cell donor — checked Sep 5, 2026
The flyer: STOP BLOOD CANCER set in tall letters over a dark plum page, a quote, and a QR code beside a text-to-join line for the U.S.One standing face of the table tent: the same headline and quote on the left, a large QR code on the right.

Take it off the screen

Print it. Put it where people already stand.

A coffee counter, a church foyer, a break room, a race table. Every sheet carries the code that opens Jeana’s walk, and a number to text for anyone who would rather not scan — no app, no wifi, nothing to hand back.Every sheet carries the code that opens Jeana’s walk — nothing to install, nothing to hand back. The number to text printed beside it is for joining NMDP, which registers people who live in the U.S., its territories and the freely associated states. If you live anywhere else, find your country’s registry.

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