Blogs from San Juan Islands, Washington, United States, North America - page 4

Welcome to the new year! For me, it is the Year of the Corvid, as that was the first type of bird I saw this morning (too brief a glimpse from a moving car of a distant bird to determine Northwestern Crow or Common Raven). First positively identified bird was a female Bufflehead, but “Year of the Bufflehead” sounds kind of ridiculous. Corvid is legit. A delayed trip to Kenya allowed for an opportunity to spend New Year's with friends on San Juan Island (as opposed to by myself on a plane somewhere above the North Pole). In stark (and somewhat welcome) contrast to last year's debauchery in Mexico ("when in Mexico, do as the Mexicans do" . . . and drink lots of tequila), I actually ended up sleeping through the New Year last night ... read more

After two days of tough hikes and long drives, we wanted to take it a bit easy and relax on Orcas Island. We started the day with a nice breakfast at the Kangaroo House and then headed downtown East Sound to explore our options for the day. There are three main activities on Orcas Island: hiking, whale watching, and sea kayaking. We decided that hiking could wait a day, and since the island looked so nice we decided to sign up for another night at the Kangaroo House. Knowing that we didn’t have to rush helped in our decisionmaking, and we settled on an afternoon of whale watching. We also went ahead and made reservations for sea kayaking the next afternoon, thinking we would hike in the morning, kayak in the afternoon, and catch the ferry ... read more

We drove north to Anacortes. We took the Mukilteo ferry to Whidbey Island. Deception Pass, between Whidey and Fidalgo Islands, is one of our favorite view points in this area. Years ago, before we moved to Washington State in the “Big Mosey of ’92,” we camped in a rented RV in Deception Pass State Park. It was here that our imaginations were first captured by two paddlers in a sea kayak entering the protected cove where we had camped. The late afternoon setting sun backlight the silhouettes of the couple in the two person sea kayak and the syncronized stokes of their paddles dipping into the silver cast of the sea. It was liquid magic. This was our quest, to personalize this memory. Not just to return to the place of inspiration, but to set upon ... read more