Several of you have asked if a car is necessary at Friday Harbor. Although it might be possible to get around without one, the short answer is “YES.”
Friday Harbor Labs is about 1.5 miles from the town of Friday Harbor, along a two lane road with no walking path. None of our reunion activities can occur at Friday Harbor Labs - think of this site as a large and beautiful rural hotel that we are getting to stay at for an incredibly cheap rate - but it has NO facilities available to us for meeting or dining. Therefore, all of the activities we’ve planned are either in town, or in state parks on the other side of the island, up to 10 miles away (see venue map). You may be making multiple trips each day to the various venues and optional activities. The island itself is about 40 miles in circumference. Carpooling to the larger group activities will be encouraged, but there will be several periods during the four day reunion when no "official" activity is planned, or there are several choices for optional tours and activities. Since there are no private places to gather and chat avalable for us at FHL, we have located several areas for this in town, and at parks several miles from FHL. Without a car, it would be necessary for you to find someone to ride with to whatever activity you want to attend, or travel into town for shopping, visits to the museums, etc. That is the primary reason we are recommending that it would be best to have your own car.
A second reason for having a car is that getting from the Seattle Airport (SeaTac) to the Anacortes Ferry Terminal means you have to travel 2+ hours north on Interstate 5. Renting a car at the airport is the most convenient way of doing this. The alternatives are a bus trip, an Uber, or the Airport-Anacortes Shuttle. (The Sunday shuttle will only drop you at the Ferry Terminal, so you will need to find a way to get to an Anacortes motel from the Ferry Building on Sunday night. The closest is a 15 minute walk, while dragging along your luggage, or a taxi or uber ride.) Renting a car after you get to the island is possible through one company in town, but they only offer older used cars, or 2-passenger open scooters at $105 per hour. (There are no large car rental companies like Hertz or Enterprise on the island.) If you add the cost of the Airport-Anacortes Shuttle and the cost of renting a car on the island, we found it was actually less expensive for a couple to just get an Enterprise car rental at the airport.
The third complicating factor is that there is no place to eat or purchase food at the Friday Harbor Laboratories. We won’t be able to have any meals there, since the Dining Hall is for students and staff only, and there is no cafe, snack bar, or even a convenience store unless you go back into town. You may need to go into town periodically to have meals in restaurants, or stock up on your cabin supplies, at least for breakfasts, which you would prepare each day in your cabin (you will have a full kitchen with large refrigerator, stove, oven, etc.) Going into town for a reunion or non-reunion lunch or dinner, trip to see the local museums, etc. also will require a vehicle.
If you do arrive with a car, when you drive off the ferry at 1:10 PM Monday, you can go directly to the King’s Market, 160 Spring St. - a full service grocery store with a terrific hot buffet - http://www.kings-market.com/deli.html. It is just a couple of blocks from the ferry. Here is a map to King's Market. You can buy things there for your breakfasts in your cabin - milk, yogurt, snacks, fruit, a roll of paper towels, coffee/filters, etc. - whatever you think you’ll need.
Having your own transportation facilitates all of the issues mentioned above.