This blog has been quiet for the last month because, well, because after four months in North Carolina and 19 days on the road, we didn’t want to go anywhere.

Recently, however, we have begun to venture “over town,” which is island-speak for going to the mainland. Some islanders apparently also talk about “going to the Americas,” which seems to indicate a feeling that Whidbey is quite a bit different from mainland places like, say, Mukilteo. I learned this from an unimpeachable source: the person who cuts my hair. Barbers, in my experience, are excellent sources, better than the taxi drivers favored by many journalists.

A week ago Sunday we went to the small mainland town of Mount Vernon (not to be confused with the one in Virginia) to the Lincoln Theater (not to be confused with the one in D.C.) to see the Wailin’ Jennys (not to be confused with Waylon Jennings, though they are named after him). The Jennys are two Canadians and one American with angelic voices who sing close harmonies. They were brilliant.

It turned out that the Mount Vernon area was also in the midst of a month-long tulip festival, which offered fields of unworldly color and more traffic than the roads were able to handle. We survived the traffic, enjoyed the concert, and made it back to the island safely.

Yesterday we ventured off the island again for a more prosaic reason, a doctor’s appointment. It was uneventful and we decided to stop for lunch afterward. As a result, we missed the ferry by two cars and had to wait for the next one. This made it more like the kind of day we used to have in our previous lives, but we decided that sitting in the ferry line was far better than sitting in Capital Beltway traffic. You have a lovely view and you can get an ice cream cone.

As we were waiting, a guy started talking to us — people waiting for the ferry are often chatty — and remarked on having to wait for a ferry on a Monday in non-tourist season. He wondered if they would ever build a bridge.

We told him that the distance, the currents, and the cost made that unlikely. We didn’t tell him that islanders would object to a bridge because it would make Whidbey just another part of the Americas.