San Juan Island

Since Rich had two weeks off, we planned two short trips instead of one long one. The first was Cannon Beach, camping, with dogs. The second was San Juan Island, Bed and Breakfast, and no dogs. While it's nice to have the dogs with us and camping is a cheap way to stay a couple of blocks from the beach, I'm really more of a B&B girl when it comes right down to it! Rich planned out the whole trip so it was all a surprise to me (except the destination). Even more surprising was when we discovered on Monday morning that it was actually the day of our reservation, not Tuesday like we had been planning. Since we could not change the dates with the B&B, we began by rushing around like crazy trying to pack everything, change the dogcare, arrange for my friend Leah to come and let the futon delivery man in, and get to the ferry on time! We ended up making the first ferry on time but just barely. For most of the trip I had to talk myself into knowing that we weren't going to make it. Then, we arrived and the ticket guy said he was hopeful that we might make it. Then, the ferry flag lady let on the cars in front of us, stopped us, and walked away. Then, SHE LET US ON! Some up and down emotions were involved, but we made it! On the other side, we had an hour and a half drive to the second ferry but, since we had made the first one, we had ample time to make the ferry we wanted, allowing us to arrive mid-afternoon on the island. Sadly, many, many people were in line for the second ferry so we spent about three hours sitting in line instead. However, we got to Friday Harbor on San Juan island just in time to check in and go find some dinner. It's a cute little town with lots of little shops and restaurants. It's more vacation-y than many of the places we have been to on the coast out here.

The view from the ferry of the harbor.

The most important building...our ice cream store.

Another cute area, little stores.

I didn't take very many pictures of the cute town, but this gives you an idea, anyway. Our bed and breakfast was about 3 miles outside of town. Called "Inn the Woods", it was set back from the road enough to feel private but was still close enough to see the little pond across the street while we were eating breakfast. The camera stayed in the car most of the time so I don't have pictures of our room. But, it was a nice, bright room with a king size bed (a bed big enough for the dogs to share and they weren't there!), a bathroom with two sinks (yay!), and a soaking tub. Normally, that would have gotten lots of use. It didn't this time, though, because we also had a hot tub on a patio just outside the room. That DID get a lot of use! Anyway, it was a nice place run by a family. The husband seemed to be in charge of the B&B part because he did the greeting, the cooking and the cleaning. He made delicious, fancy breakfasts too!

That first night we asked for a recommendation for a restaurant and he listed off so many, we had no idea what any of them were the second he stopped talking. We tried to find one that was hidden behind a parking lot, but were unsuccessful. I got a little cranky at that point because I was hungry and, at that point, it's always best just to get into whatever the next place available is! We went to "Food for thought" (I think! I was busy running in and getting to a table fast!) Anyway, they had live music. It was one man and his cowboy music. I know many of you out there, including Uncle Dan, would have especially liked him. Lots of Kenny Rogers and even some Marty Rollins (yes, THAT song, Mom!). He wasn't very good but he was having a good time, so that was nice. The food was good too and then we had to see if there was an ice cream store. Luckily, we found The Doctor's Office, which you can see part of in the middle picture above. Homemade ice cream and one of the flavors was cookies 'n cream, so you know I was happy! It was no Sundae School, but it did alright. Anyway, after that it was back to the B&B to try out our hot tub and catch up on some reading.

The next morning, after our quiche and fruit, we found two points of interest on our island map and set out to sight see. The island had gentle rolling hills, fields, and livestock. It reminded me of Whidbey Island (there is a post about that a few before this one). I tried to take some picture of it but some are blurry because we were driving at the same time. If you look carefully at the horizon in many of the pictures, you can see the Olympic Mountains running along them.

Next we arrived at our first point of interest: the lavender farm. I didn't know quite what to expect but I love lavender and I was not disappointed.

Of course, you can imagine the smell. What I didn't realize was about the bees. There were so many bees that you could feel the vibrations of their buzzing in the air. It was amazing. After we enjoyed the beauty of the fields for awhile, we went into the shop where they had everything from lavender soap to lavender chutney. My favorite, though, was the lavender ice cream. We had to try it!

Delicious! If you've never had the chance to try it, you have to go get some. Right now! Our happened to be sandwiched between two chocolate cookies. That's not a bad way to go...

Anyway, on we went to the next place: whale watch park and lime kiln light house. We only had a few minutes here because we had to get back to town for our whale watch, but we wanted to see it. We liked it so much, we decided to go back later that evening for sunset. While we were there, I left SOMEONE alone with my camera for thirty seconds and the result was this:

No, I didn't turn them upside down, they came that way.

For the whale watch we went out on a 55 foot boat called the Sea Lion. This is a different experience from a Cape Cod whale watch. The boat wasn't big. The whales are big. I was a bit nervous. But, as we pulled out of the harbor, we came across some harbor seals and I forgot about the boat size. Now, I will put in some pictures here but they are blurry. My camera lens and the binoculars they gave us had the same zoom power. Rich used the binoculars and I just used the camera lens and clicked when I felt like it. For some reason when it is fully zoomed, though, the pictures come back blurry. I am so disappointed in the quality of these shots (especially because that thing was EXPENSIVE!) Anyway, harbor seals and stellar sea lions (not stellar in the awesome sense, that is the official name) were first on the list. The sea lions were hunting and the seals were basking. Here are a couple of the better shots.

Seals all over the rocks.

A seal in the water.

The sea lion pictures that I have aren't even worth posting because they are too blurry. Next, the boat pulled to the other side of the channel and there was an enormous bald eagle sitting on a rock formation. These are blurry too (UGH!!) but I'm going to post a couple anyway, including a far away shot so you can see how big he was.

You have to click on this one or you might miss that the black speck on top is the bird.

There was also a lighthouse on the southernmost tip of the island that we rounded shortly after the eagle sighting and Mt. Baker was out, although there were a few clouds in my way (how dare they!)

Mt. Baker

There are the Olympic Mountains again. This is another good candidate to be clicked on and enlarged!

Then, on to the whales! We had great luck and probably saw about thirty whales. The thing about killer whales is that you mostly only see their dorsal fins. And, because you are on a smaller boat, you can't see their bodies very well (also because we had to stay pretty far away from them). In that way, it wasn't as exciting as seeing the humpbacks. However, there were so many and when they swam in lines or groups, it was exciting to see many whales together, which the humpbacks don't seem to do. These are blurry pictures too. Also, they are mostly of dorsal fins. I'll just pick a few of my favorites.

I feel pretty lucky to have this picture. They usually don't breach. Not only did this guy breach, but I happened to have my camera zoomed in on him and managed to click the button at exactly the right moment to catch him. Yay!

Here are a couple of my favorite scenery pictures from the ride.

After the whale watch, we found a restaurant for dinner (we had had lunch there too, but it was good so we went back) and headed out to see the sunset. The whale watch area is one of the best places in the world to see killer whales from shore. We missed them because they had already been past at about 4:00 PM, but we had seen so many on the boat that we didn't mind. We had a lot of fun taking our sunset (and pre-sunset pictures though!) Photo credits to Rich for many of these!

We call this shadow-glyphics!

Approaching the lighthouse.

The light house (a different one from the one we saw on the boat earlier.)

Going...

going...

Stop and try to be artistic...

Gone!

That brought us to the end of our vacation on the island. The next morning it was up to have breakfast, drive to get in line for the ferry, and ride off into the sound on our way back to Bremerton (where we had a very sweet greeting from our dogs!)