Tuesday morning we left Seattle bright and early for the San Juan Islands and Mike and Claudia’s (my uncle and aunt) house. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Which was great because it made traveling easy, but bad because we spent the whole day traveling. After a quick CostCo stop for some necessities (40 tortillas, 2 lbs of cheese, beans and Mac and Cheese) we lined up at the ferry dock for the afternoon sailing. We tried to find a neat beach that Mike had told us about, but all we ended up doing was slogging around in a swamp and getting caught in the blackberry bushes. At least we go a couple late season blackberries for our trouble!
After a great ferry ride, we finally made it to the Island. Mike showed us the boat we would be sleeping on, the Carpe Diem, docked in Roche Harbor. Last time I stayed on it the heat wasn’t working, so it wasn’t such a pleasant experience. This time it was nice and toasty, so it kept my little feeties warm. I didn’t even have to wear my flannel jammies with the little plastic feet. Not that I own such a thing. We then headed on over to Mike and Claudia’s, where Nate got to meet Rowdy and April, their two black Labradors. Rowdy is one of the friendliest labs you could ever meet…who weighs at least 120 lbs. He could knock down an elephant if he chose, but usually just likes to be pet. April is even friendlier, and will actually push Rowdy out of the way to steal whatever petting she can. Mike had a class that evening, but Claudia continued the great tradition of us eating awesome meals and getting fat. I guess I’ll be plenty warm this winter.
The next day, after wrestling with a stubborn outboard motor, we launched Claudia’s 13’ Boston Whaler, which you can see many times in our ream of photos. There was no one else out on the water that day, maybe because it was raining and really cold. But no one ever accused us of being smart, so we went racing around in the boat and had a grand old time. We even got in a short hike on the almost uninhabited (at this time of year at least) Henry Island. We also went over to Posey Island, which disappointed us by not having any posies to frolic in. But it’s actually a neat little island no more than 100 yards in diameter that exactly 0 people live on.
The next day, after lounging around for the morning like a couple deadbeats with no jobs—wait, we are deadbeats with no jobs—we packed up some gear and headed on over to Posey Island to camp for the night. Since the tide had typically been low in the morning, we anchored the boat a bit offshore to make sure it would be floating in the morning. We thought we would have the whole place to ourselves but a momma deer and her baby were rude enough to think that they could hang out on the island and eat all our grass too. After much discussion with the rest of the tribe, we decided they wouldn’t be kicked off the island and could in fact remain, as long as they brought us breakfast in the morning. Which they totally didn’t, and I had to give Baby Deer a stern talking to. After a long, arduous journey, we circumnavigated the island (it took about three minutes, but it was a hard three minutes) and picked our campsite. We feasted on a sumptuous dinner of Mac and Cheese, and then went to bed under the stars…and approaching clouds. The rain didn’t actually come until 3 am, at which point Nate totally freaked me out by waking me up with his headlamp in my eyes and a “Jory, come look at this!” It turned out it was some otters that I didn’t even get to see. Speaking of freaking out, I had also woken up sometime during the night and screamed something about one of the deer licking Nate’s face, but we both only vaguely remember that. I really need to lay off the crack.
I was the first one up in the morning and crawled out of the tent to check on the boat. I looked just offshore and saw no boat…because it was 25’ up the beach. Some might have said we were up a creek without a paddle, but we actually had two paddles and would have been thankful to be up a creek, because at least the boat would have been in the water. Being the super engineering dork that I am, I devised a plan to haul two very large and very heavy logs down the beach and position them behind the boat like rails, so we could slide the boat down to the water. Which didn’t work at all. Both of us, pulling as hard as we could, couldn’t even get the back of the boat off the ground, must less on to 12” logs. So, having no real reason to get uppity, we just sat and waited for the tide to come in. There aren’t many times in life when you can just sit and watch the tide rise, and we both actually enjoyed just sitting there with nothing else to do. Eventually the boat was in the water and we headed on back to the harbor. We then went in to town so Nate could get a checkup on his finger. The verdict: it doesn’t look like it’s healing right, go see an orthopedic hand specialist.
One of the animals in the islands we had not yet seen were the Orcas (Killer Whales) that like to hang out on the West side of the Island, so later that day we headed over that way to have a look. After some squinting through the binoculars, we finally spotted a pod swimming South and snapped a few photos. After that, it was back to Mike and Claudia’s for another good meal and a dry place to sleep.
The next day was to be our last on the island, so we had some errands to do. The first was to go out and look for some Orcas in the boat. We didn’t manage to find any, but we were successful in beating ourselves senseless in the Whaler. As Mike likes to put it, in rough water the Whaler “rides like a door.” I can attest to the fact that the ride does very much resemble a door...on the back of a bull…who has some hammers…and some of his bull friends who like to join in the fun and use the hammers to beat on our kidneys. Even so I was laughing like a little girl racing around out there. After the unsuccessful whale watching trip, we headed over to see Claudia’s new horse. He’s a 20 year old Arabian who at times has a brilliant white coat but has an affinity for rolling around in the mud. He (Sonny) was a really friendly horse and should be a lot of fun. Then it was on up to Jim and Mary’s, up on top of the highest hill on the Island. They have a gorgeous house and an unbelievable view that we totally forgot to take pictures of. When we got there, Mary had made fresh pesto and tomato pizza with a salad, as well as a batch of chocolate chip cookies. We sat out on the back deck eating and looking over the whole island chain while bald eagles soared on thermals out in front of us. No joke, that’s all true.
It was then time to head back down the mountain and over to the ferry for the boat home. After a quick stop to say bye to Mike and Claudia and the dogs, we were back on the ferry and headed southbound to Seattle, and hopefully a resolution to Nate’s broken finger.