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Chuckanut to Bellingham

Day 9 · Completed

Above Samish Bay

Chuckanut Drive above Samish Bay, Skagit County, Washington

A world of mystery and magic, and a tent pitched above Samish Bay

This day on the route

Date
The day
Walking
Walked
12 miles

Day 9, September 15: 12 miles walked, from 7.1 miles short of Blanchard, through Blanchard and up Chuckanut Drive to a pullout above Samish Bay. Chuckanut Drive has narrow shoulders; anyone following should check current access.

Route overview, not turn-by-turn directions.

A winding country road crosses golden fields toward small houses beneath a densely forested slope, with a strip of bay at left, painted in gouache.
Blanchard, which she walked through on the way to Samish Bay. Illustration.

On September 15 Jeana walked 12 miles from north of Mount Vernon through Blanchard and up Chuckanut Drive, and pitched her tent at a pullout above Samish Bay.

Staff from the fitness centre next to her hotel drove her to the point where she had stopped the day before, 7.1 miles short of Blanchard, and she walked on from there. Near Bow she helped Ellie, at a sanctuary there, update her NMDP record.

She left Blanchard around four in the afternoon and climbed onto Chuckanut Drive, past Chuckanut Manor. At Samish Bay she spent a long time looking for anywhere flat enough for the tent, and settled on a big pullout, an overlook really, with no facilities but a flat piece of grass. The ground was hard, and some men who stopped helped her get the stakes in. She slept well.

Chuckanut Drive follows steep ground above Samish and Chuckanut bays, and the state forest above Blanchard has a long history of logging, fire and public management.

From the road

A world of mystery and magic, and a tent pitched above Samish Bay

She was up early and ready to walk between half past seven and eight. Next door to the Wingate was a fitness centre. They invited her to share the information with their manager, who was out, so she took his details to follow up, and they offered to run her up to the point on the route where she had stopped. The fourteen miles to Blanchard she had already split across two days, so there were seven and a tenth of them left.

Things do not always go the way you expect, as she puts it. The place she had hoped for in Blanchard, the Bow Sanctuary and Wellness Center, could not take her — the person who could have said yes was away for the day, and the receptionist was new and did not feel able to make that call about a stranger. She did point out a pullout next door where people park campers.

The receptionist’s name is Ellie, and she turned out to be on the NMDP registry already. Jeana asked whether her contact details were still current. Ellie did not think they were, so Jeana pointed her at nmdp.org to put it right. She was glad the two of them had crossed paths, and she wanted the same thing said to everybody reading this.

She found a spot for the tent, but it was early yet to be putting one up. A local man called John — a very kind person, she says — thought she would do better to press on. Ellie bought her protein snacks in case she could not reach the next town before she had to stop, and hard-boiled eggs, which turned out to be the next morning’s breakfast. She left Blanchard at about four.

What came after that she describes as walking into a world of mystery and magic. The road runs above three bays with islands out beyond them, and the forest on the inland side is dense and mossy and full of ferns. She stopped at Chuckanut Manor and they gave her a bowl of clam chowder and some bread, which did for her dinner — the best, she says, and worth the trip on its own. Then the road climbs. What struck her was how much her body has changed since that first night in Seattle: the same sort of hill, her knees fine, the whole of it enjoyable. It is busy and winding and the shoulder disappears in places, but she calls it a joy to walk.

At Samish Bay she spent a long time looking for anywhere flat enough for the tent. Resting on a guardrail, she spotted what looked like a level patch up in the forest across the road, and climbed to it — swinging the pack up ahead of her — only to find it was nothing of the kind. Three teenagers were passing as she started back down, and she called to them for help. The young man let her put her hands on his shoulders and they walked out together. Little angels, she calls them.

The place she settled on was a big pullout, an overlook really, with no facilities but a flat piece of grass. The ground was hard, and some Sikh men stopped to help her get the stakes in. She slept well.

And everyone she met along the way that day, she adds, copied the QR code.

If your address, email or phone number changes, go online and update your NMDP record. Then, if you’re the match, they can find you — and you can save a life.

Jeana Moore
Jeana Moore in her hi-vis vest and pack straps, smiling cheek to cheek with a woman in sunglasses and a green and white striped shirt, a bare ploughed field behind them.Rough grass in the foreground giving way to flat Skagit farmland, a power line crossing a wide blue sky.A long mountain ridge with a tall column of cloud standing above it, over mown green fields and farm buildings.A freshly mown hayfield striped with cut rows running toward farm buildings, a blue silo and scattered black and white cattle, with a forested mountain ridge under a sky of broken cloud.A black and white cow lying down in a pasture, seen through the leaves of a roadside tree.A straight two-lane road with dark crack-sealing lines snaking across it, one big tree beside it and mountains ahead.Small yellow daisy-like flowers on wiry stems, crowded together at the roadside.An empty two-lane road with a yellow centre line, running past open fields under a pale sky.A deep red frilled flower opening among narrow blue-green leaves.A hand-lettered sign on a metal barn reading Buffalo and Bison Meat, steaks, hamburger, pepperoni, salami, with a phone number.A large banner on the side of a metal barn reading EAT HEALTHY in tall dark letters.A dark bronze bison standing on a rock in a green field, with trees and a distant ridge behind it.
Show all 41 photos from this dayShow fewer photos
A road running away toward a mountain, with farm buildings and telegraph poles along one side.A white flower the size of a hand with a crimson centre and red veins radiating out through the petals.A white Victorian house with steep gables and a porch, set back behind a white picket fence beside the road.A row of tall trees along the edge of a field of dry pale grass, with a mountain ridge behind them.A tidal channel winding through marsh grass out toward the bay, with low islands on the horizon.A large rounded island rising across the bay behind a beach lined with old wooden pilings, seen over scrubby marsh and a grassy embankment path with a utility pole at the right.The bay and a line of low islands seen across a flat field, under bands of grey and white cloud.A railway line and a still channel running side by side below the road, with a bridge crossing and a forested hill beyond.A railroad track curving along a wooded shoreline between a still channel and a small lagoon, with old pilings on the mudflat, a small wooden float and the open bay beyond.The bay and its islands framed by the branches of a tree at the roadside, the sky pale above the water.Broad lobed leaves and dark conifer boughs frame a view over green shrubs to the gray bay, with a line of low islands and hills beneath a mottled sky.A blue and white roadside sign reading Leaving Tsunami Hazard Zone, half surrounded by summer greenery.A roadside sign with a painted salmon above the words Chuckanut Manor, seafood grill.Picnic tables on a bluff above the bay, seen past the trunk of a very large fir.A picnic table on a sunny bluff beside the trunk of a big fir, with slender trees silhouetted against the glittering bay and a curved kite flying high over the water.Late sun turning the bay to silver, with dark trees in the foreground and a tower on the far shore.A kite hanging in the sky over the bay, the water glittering silver behind a row of silhouetted trees, with white-flowered shrubs in the foreground and hills along the far shore.A two-lane road curving away downhill under a canopy of trees, a metal guardrail along the outside of the bend.The sun high over the bay, the water silver-white below a road and a railway line cut into the hillside.Tall straight conifers with the bright water of the bay showing between their trunks.A moss-covered branch angling across the underside of a concrete road bridge, with ferns and a rocky creek in the shade below.A concrete road bridge seen from above, its arch and parapet thick with moss and ferns, the road curving away beyond it.A hand-painted sign reading Fresh Oysters with an arrow, beside a life-size metal heron standing on a post.The sun going down over the bay through the silhouettes of tall firs, the sky orange along the horizon.A band of deep orange sky above the dark ridge of an island, the sun gone and the water still.A roadside information board headed Samish Bay Shellfish and Water Quality, with a map of the watershed.Orange light fading over the bay, seen between the black silhouettes of firs on the bluff.A small grey dome tent pitched on bare ground between two boulders, the bay and the last of the sunset showing through the trees behind it.A gray dome tent printed with the REI co-op logo pitched tight against a large boulder on bare ground, slender trees behind it and a glow of sunset showing between the trunks.
Distance walked
12 miles
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Continue to the official registry that serves you. It decides eligibility, handles registration and contacts you if you may match a patient.

United States — NMDP

NMDP accepts new registry members who are 18 to 35, live in the US, its territories or freely associated states, can meet NMDP’s health guidelines, and are not already registered through another US organization. Joining happens at home: you answer a few questions on NMDP’s site, they mail you a free cheek-swab kit, and you swab and send it back. Once you are a member you stay listed until you are 61 unless you ask to be removed — 61 is when NMDP takes you off, not an age at which you can join. NMDP makes the final eligibility decision.

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NMDP — Join the registry · checked Sep 1, 2026

Prefer to text? Send JADA to 61474 and NMDP will take it from there.

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Sources

Local history and background reading for this stop.

  1. Blanchard State Forest — checked Sep 5, 2026
  2. Historic Highway SR 11 — 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.

Everything else for running a drive

Rather be the one at the table?

Host a registration drive at your school, work or place of worship, raise funds, or lend a skill. Tell us what you have in mind and we will help you plan it.

Ways to volunteerHost a registration drive