San Juan Island

This morning we took the ferry out to the San Juan Islands!  There are hundreds of islands, but only 4 are serviced by the Washington State Ferry – San Juan/Friday Harbor, Shaw, Lopez and Orcas. 

Since we only had one day we decided to just stick to San Juan/Friday Harbor. 

We were up early to get to the ferry terminal to get the 9 am boat.  We’d debated bringing the car or renting a car on the island, but when the ferry had room for cars we decided to take the car.

This ferry was MUCH bigger than yesterday’s ferry!  It had 2 levels in the car hold and 2 levels of passenger decks! It was pretty full too!

When we set off from Anacortes it was very foggy.  We couldn’t see a thing!  And it was cold! About 1/2 way to Friday Harbor the fog broke very suddenly and just like that it was sunny and clear!  I still have 3G service on my phone so I was able to use google maps to attempt to identify the islands.  It’s very hard because they all have jagged coastlines and there are lots of little islands. 

It totally reminds me of Maine!  The islands are rounded and filled with evergreens and exposed rock.  I see why a friend mistook one of my pictures from Acadia for the West Coast! 

We arrived in Friday Harbor and found a good place for lunch and then wandered a bit before we ate!  I can’t remember the name of the place we ate, but it was great!  Lovely curry chicken salad and chocolate cream pie!

After lunch we began our “Speedy Gonzalez” tour of the island.  We had to catch the 6:40 ferry back to Anacortes!

We went counter-clockwise from Friday Harbor.  We drove out to Roche Harbor where we visited a cool sculpture garden!  There were hundreds of sculptures, but we only had time to check out a few!  We also watched several small planes land and take off from the airstrip just behind us.

The next stop was Krystal Acres Alpaca Farm!  The Alpacas were so cute! They had a great gift shop too!  The lady who was staffing it also hand knits many of the products they were selling from hand dyed Alpaca yarn! Rather than buying an outrageously expensive pair of socks, I got a skein of yarn and a scarf pattern that the owner made up – looking forward to making my own scarf!

Up next was Lime Kiln State Park – they had a lighthouse and whale watching opportunities!  There’s a pod of killer whales – Orcas – the frequent the Strait of Georgia right by the park.  Dad drug the spotting scope out but didn’t see any whales, just a few dolphins.  I checked out the rocky tide pools, but there was nothing interesting. 

Off to the next stop!  We did get a bit sidetracked by the view of the Olympic Mts, and the possibility of more whale watching, but eventually we made our way around to the Pelindaba Lavender farm.  WOW.  Huge fields of lavender! Amber waves of purple! I took a whole bunch of pictures and then checked out the gift shop.  It was nice, but it was lavender run amok.  Everything you can think of with lavender – lavender soap, cleaning products, honey, cookies, shampoo, lotion, wreaths, everything.  It was neat, but it was a little much!

We started heading back to Friday Harbor – we’d missed the 4:50 ferry so had to wait to 6:40.  We thought we might have seen Mt. Rainier, but it was clouds.  We had some awesome views of Mt. Baker. 

Back in Friday Harbor we had some time to kill before the boat so I checked out the bookstore and then we got some dinner.  The service was slow and we still hadn’t gotten out food when the ferry pulled in so we got it to go and ate in the car! We had plenty of time before the boat left, but we didn’t want to risk it, especially with the car sitting in the loading lane!

The trip back was clear the whole way! I stood out on the deck and took about a hundred pictures!  Great views of Mt. Baker!

Once back at the campground I finished up my packing and headed to bed!

San Juan Island