FRIDAY HARBOR FUN ANY DAY : GAUGING TOURISM.

Byline: Sophia Dembling Special to the Daily News

Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island, looks very Sausalito from the deck of the Washington state ferry, with quaint Victorian bungalows and sleek weathered wood buildings climbing the hill from shore.

Surely under the smell of brine can be caught a whiff of fudge, the primary food of the seaside vacation. Surely there are hundreds of Friday Harbor T-shirts on shelves alongside figurines made of shells. Surely there is an ice-cream parlor with red-and-white awnings.

Or not.

Surprisingly, delightfully, there are few gimmicks to Friday Harbor, the largest, busiest town and county seat of the San Juan Islands.

There is no smell of fudge in the air here. There are a few souvenir shops, but most shops and galleries sell fine crafts and imports. There are nice restaurants. A liquor store. Hardware store. Grocery store.

Perhaps things look different during the peak season. Then, the wait to take a car onto a ferry can be hours long. Experienced island hoppers put their cars in line early and leave them there, sometimes even overnight. There is a $100 fine if you're not back at your car by boarding time.

Because these northern seas have been over-fished and commercial salmon fishing has been banned, tourism is increasingly important to the islands' economies. But tourism here is entered cautiously.

``There are three schools of thought,'' says Skip Metzger who, with his wife, owns the Tucker House and San Juan Inn b&bs. ``No growth, unlimited growth and planned growth.''

This can be seen in the four San Juan islands that are served by Washington state ferries. San Juan has the most tourism development; Orcas is close behind; Lopez has limited offerings; and Shaw is holding tourism at bay.

There are dozens of accommodations - mostly b&bs - on San Juan, from the cinnamon-scented Tucker House, a couple of blocks from the ferry landing, to the white-carpeted Olympic Lights, set on a stark seaside landscape several miles from town.

Locals are protective of their limited resources. So rather than create attractions, they promote San Juan's natural assets: a craggy coastline enclosing rolling farmland, pretty lakes and fragrant pine forests. The San Juan Islands are popular with kayakers, cyclists and other nature lovers.

And there is the thrilling opportunity to see whales during the peak season of mid-May through August.

You may - must, really - stop at the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor before setting off whale watching.

The Whale Museum focuses on education and research. Your entrance is serenaded by the recorded lowings of the area's three resident orca pods. Whale skeletons hang from the ceiling and exhibits discuss anatomy, mythology, history. A photo display traces the genealogy of the resident pods with photos of their dorsal fins; you may be fortunate enough to spot these same mammals. You are asked to report all local sightings to a toll-free number.

Whale-watching competition

Whale-watching boat excursions are available from various operators. You also can go to Lime Kiln State Park and visit the rocky outcropping reached via a pleasant pine-cone-strewn path that is one of the islands' best places for on-land whale spotting.

San Juan Island also has its own peculiar footnote to history, marked with national historic parks on each end of the island. One was site of a British military post, the other an American. The two countries, tense about territorial rights, set up camp on San Juan in 1859 after an American squatter shot a British pig.

It was called the Pig War, but it never came to much. The Germans eventually stepped in to arbitrate the squabbles, granted the San Juans to the United States, and in 1872 the British garrison was abandoned with no one the worse but the pig.

Tempers were no doubt soothed by the lovely locations of the posts. On the northern end, the British were cozily tucked among the pines, overlooking Wescott Bay. A trail winds through the forest; interpretive signs are posted along it. A few buildings, a cemetery and a restored formal garden remain.

The American camp is more brazen, set on a peninsula with grand, long views of the water and islands beyond. Trails cut through the long grasses that whisper in the wind. Here, too, a few buildings remain, and the story of the Pig War is posted along the trails.

If you need to know more about this incident, visit the Pig War Museum in Friday Harbor.

Other than that and Friday Harbor, the pleasure of San Juan Island is simply in messing about, driving the roads, getting lost (remarkably easy), catching glimpses of wonderful views and stopping to drink some in.

It's enough to make you forget about fudge.