Street view of a few of the vendor booths at the 2012 Anacortes Arts Festival.

The 2012 Anacortes Arts Festival was held last weekend, August 3, 4, and 5. Since the festival sets up in downtown Anacortes, it is walking distance from Anacortes Marina, and we had a good opportunity to visit and walk through the vendor booths without having to deal with the limited parking space.

We walked through Cap Sante Boat Haven on our way to the Arts Festival, and enjoyed a great view of Cap Sante Park, looking out through the entrance to the marina.

Unfortunately, last weekend was the hottest of the summer, with temps in the mid-80s in the shade and 90 and above in the direct sun. The vendor booths were shaded, but the walkways of the event were open to the heat of the sun…and the sun reflecting off the asphalt of the streets made it too hot for us to linger. We didn’t see as much of the event as we might have if the weather had been cooler.

On our walk back to Anacortes Marina, we stopped to take this photo of Fidalgo Bay, with Cap Sante Park on the left and snow-capped Mt. Baker on the right in the distance.

We did visit festival booths both Saturday and Sunday, and wandered through several of the artisan displays. We walked to the event on Saturday, then decided to ride our bicycles instead on Sunday to avoid the heat…it’s a much faster trip on the bikes, and there are several places where we could leave the bikes and have just a short walk to Commercial Avenue where the booths were set up.

The maple bowl we found to use as a small salad bowl. It is lightweight and will fit nicely in one of our boat lockers.

We didn’t make any major purchases, but did see some nice art and even found a great wooden bowl. We have been looking for a small, lightweight wooden salad bowl for the boat, and one of the vendors, Jay W. Saxon, DBA Bowled Eagle, had a bowl on display that caught our eye. It is made out of maple and will fit nicely in one of our boat lockers. We also enjoyed some great ice cream cones from the Lopez Island Creamery Ice Cream booth…that was perfect to help with the heat!