Things have been busy lately as usual, but of course good too! Now that I'm back from my month away in Spokane, which was really fun, we took a quick trip up to the San Juan Islands and had so much fun! Everyone has also spoken of this place with wonder, and it really lived up to all our expectations! We made a few stops on our way up, including of course, Chipotle for lunch on the way, then we stopped and saw Harry Potter in Everett, then stopped at the Marysville Outlets and found a few things, most notably a refurbished Blu-Ray player for Bob at the Sony Store. This will be his EARLY Christmas present AND covers me for our anniversary coming up in 2 weeks too! You've never seen a happier Bob. :) So that was fun and unexpected!
Then we drove on to our hotel in Burlington. We'd planned to camp, but a week is not enough planning for summertime so they were all booked everywhere, which actually turned out incredibly well for us, since it POURED both nights! With the evening showers we were loving our hotel! We woke up earlyish on Saturday morning and drove to Anacortes and took the ferry to Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, then took a van to Roche Harbor where the fun began! There were so many fun options of what to do up there, but we tried not to pack too much in so just planned to kayak around the islands and the websites all had pictures of kayakers with orcas around them, so we had HIGH hopes that we'd get an opportunity like that, and we DID! Our guides said about 30% of the groups in July end up seeing an orca, and we were lucky enough to see a mother and calf AND a male very close! They were hunting together near us for about 20 minutes and kept surfacing and it was AMAZING.
This is the ferry terminal in Anacortes as we left
The mist in front of the mountains was so pretty--the whole area was pretty beautiful!
The reflection of the trees in the water from the ferry
Arriving at Friday Harbor!
Bob looks pretty sweet decked out in his practical and fashionable kayak skirt!
Out on the water! Sorry it's crooked-it's a 2-person kayak and so I'm turned around to take this and trying not to tip us over!
If you've never really seen kelp up close and personal, it's pretty impressive so you're missing out! It was all around us the whole day but I never stopped being impressed by it! My hand is here to give you some scale... the bulbous parts of it were pretty solid and hard and were size of my palm! The length was impressive too... the smaller ones were still longer than our kayak and the biggest ones were HUGE.
Here's a tiny island covered in seals with a kelp forest in between
Here's some of the impressive sea life we encountered! This is an ochre sea star, clearly attempting to grab Bob's face!
And there's its underside. The mouth is in the center and there are TONS of "tube feet" that are mostly retracted on the arms. His back was kind of poky and hard and his underside was really soft and squishy, but he was a LOT heavier than I thought he'd be!
The rock cliffs were pretty cool too
Me on the island we ate lunch on
More of the views
Both of us on Lunch Island (Ok, it was the southern edge of Henry island I think)
More sealife: The tidepools near where we had lunch were so entertaining. They all had a few of these tiny crabs in them
We were VERY popular with the harbor seals! Pupping season is early July, so there were lots of pups who'd just swim right up next to our kayak to say hello! I guess their moms leave them on shore while they go out to hunt and sometimes they sneak out for a dip! They were pretty cute! We saw tons of other seals on different rock islands we passed throughout the day too--it was hilarious to watch them on land because they're so awkward as they slowly hobble!
Our guide caught several neat jelly fishes, and I actually saw about 5 throughout the day, which was pretty cool--Bob and I kept joking that we'd never seen "wild" jellyfish before--just the ones in aquariums! This was a common "water jelly" per our guide, and was surprisingly substantial--the look so filmy, but he was pretty solid. Most of the jellies in our area can't sting us, interestingly enough. Yay for that! (Although as you may recall, I did see a little girl with a jelly fish sting a few months ago, so not all of them are safe!)
After an AWESOME day of kayaking, we went to the whale museum, where my friend Jen worked for a summer during college, and it was awesome! Here's Bob with a giant orca
I guess he was hungry! And that flipper is huge!
Wow, who knew whale skeletons ate people?
Me too! I'd like to note that my arms actually almost look tan here! I'm going to enjoy that since we all know I remain pasty as ever... Better than burnt from our full day in the sun! Thank goodness for SPF 45!
We always have to document the fire stations for Ron (Bob's dad--he's the fire chief at home) so here's the Friday Harbor fire station!
Very cute downtown with flags. Gotta love the flags!
We had a delicious dinner after our long busy day, and our table had really comfy cute leather armchairs which Bob settled right into. Note that he's resting his eyes while tightly clutching his beloved iPhone!
So overall it was a wonderful weekend. We got to see orcas and seals really close up, saw tons of bald eagles, a bunch of jelly fish, some star fish, lots of neat sea birds, and a ton of beautiful scenery. We kayaked all around Henry Island, which is awesomely shaped like an "H" and went nearly 10 miles per our guide. (If you checked out the map at the start of this post, Henry Island is off the Northwest corner of San Juan Island)We're not terribly sore yet, but we'll see what tomorrow holds! We're taking ibuprofen in full anticipation of the big hurt coming though! That's way more work than my arms ever do, although at least Bob should be somewhat more conditioned! If you ever have a chance to go, take it! And spend more than a day... we definitely could have spent several days there and been quite entertained! The weather was perfect too---low 80's with a nice breeze so the cool water felt great when we'd splash ourselves but not too hot at all!
This trip really reinforced to us how very much we'll miss the Northwest when the Army sends us somewhere else next June/July. We have loved being so close to friends and family, but aside from that, this is such an incredibly beautiful area and there's still so much we haven't really seen! Our next weekend trip plans involve Victoria, BC since we didn't get to spend much time there on our way back from the Alaska cruise and especially want to see the world famous Butchart gardens there, although some people have said they're really beautiful around Christmastime too. We'll aim for summer but take what we can get! For now the only upcoming fun we have planned is my 9-day trip to DC to interview for GI fellowship (which I leave for tomorrow) and of course to enjoy visiting Cristy and Nathanial then too! Thanks again for letting me stay there! After that we have plans to see my family in Sep for Joe and Sandy's wedding which should be awesome! Sadly it means we're missing the resident retreat at the Great Wolf Lodge, but my little brother only gets married once! Have a great Sunday!
Here's a glimpse of the male orca--sorry it's so bouncy! There were some huge waves!
P.S. We all know I'm behind on the rest of the Alaska pics, and the trip home in July, but I took virtually no pictures of the latter trip, including my 10 year high school reunion, as sad as that is, so I'll get to it soon, but figured I'd do this trip while it was still fresh since I leave tomorrow and will surely get more behind soon!
