A very Vashon week

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 8, 2026

It would be hard to invent a more Vashon edition than this one.

In Ober Park, hundreds of children raced across the grass for the annual Eggstravaganza, turning months of planning into a few joyful minutes of springtime chaos. It was the kind of community ritual Vashon does especially well: local, intergenerational, a little scrappy and full of heart.

In these pages, we also told the story of Backbone Campaign’s recent trip to Washington, D.C., where the Vashon-based activist arts group deployed a 13-foot inflatable Trump and its now widely seen burning “We the People” imagery on the national stage.

Whatever one’s politics, the scale of the work, the craftsmanship behind it and the sheer audacity of it all felt unmistakably Vashon — handmade, theatrical, deeply committed and impossible to ignore.

Then there was the water taxi news: Sunday sailings are coming, giving Vashon seven-day passenger-only service to Seattle for the first time in decades.

That is more than a convenience. It is a meaningful connection to jobs, appointments, recreation and the wider region — and a reminder that island life works best when access does, too.

And alongside all of that came the loss of Joe Ulatoski, a longtime islander whose life of service left a lasting mark here. Founder of VashonBePrepared and remembered, fittingly, through one final remarkable story, Joe represented something enduring about this community: steadiness, generosity and a readiness to show up when needed.

Taken together, these stories capture something true about this place. Vashon is playful and serious, practical and idealistic, rooted in tradition and unafraid of spectacle. We gather for children’s egg hunts. We fight for better transit. We send giant political art into the world. And we honor the people who helped shape this island along the way.