Washington State Route 11 - Route Description

Route Description

SR 11, named Chuckanut Drive for its whole route, begins at a partial cloverleaf interchange with I-5 north of Burlington. From the interchange, the highway travels northwest through farmland, closely paralleling a BNSF Railway route from Mount Vernon to Bellingham, also used by the Amtrak Cascades service. The road turns north to intersect Bow Hill Road, formerly SR 237 until 1991, east of Edison. SR 11 continues north to Blanchard, where it begins to traverse a narrow strip of land between the Chuckanut Mountains and Samish Bay. Midway between Blanchard and the Skagit–Whatcom county line, the highway travels through a hairpin turn at Oyster Creek.

In Whatcom County, SR 11 travels generally northward through part of the oldest state park in Washington, the 2,683-acre (10.86 km2) Larrabee State Park.

Just past the park, the route travels through the Chuckanut Bay Community, situated on a small, fairly level peninsula separating Samish and Chuckanut bays. The steep mountainsides return north of the community, however, as SR 11 follows Chuckanut Bay to the southern outskirts of Bellingham. Here, the highway briefly parallels Bellingham Bay as it leaves the rural mountains for the city's densely populated Fairhaven district.

The route initially heads northwest through Fairhaven, passing the district's middle school and park before becoming 12th Street and crossing over the Interurban Trail. Two blocks north of the trail, SR 11 turns to travel east on Old Fairhaven Parkway, a wide two-lane highway with a center left-turn lane. The route continues past residential and commercial areas for about 1 mile (1.6 km) to a diamond interchange with I-5. While SR 11 ends here, Old Fairhaven Parkway continues east as Connelly Avenue.