Month: June 2024

An opportunity to compare east coast and west coast boating is about the only positive we could find in the three unwelcomed days of wind and rain we endured in Anacortes.  So here it goes.

East coast: dockage.  West coast: moorage.  If you ask for dockage, they think you’re an idiot.  Except oddly they have dockhands, not moorhands.  Also except dockhands are as rare as AGLCA burgees.

East coast: AGLCA burgees.  West coast: nope.

East Coast: transients.  West coast: guests.  Much more genteel.

East coast: boat cards.  West coast: no boat cards.  Boooo.

East coast: mountains.  West coast: east coast mountains are hills.  Mountains out here are huge and snow-covered.  The photo at the top of this post is an example of a west coast mountain.  Incidentally, those little sticky-uppy things in the lower right foreground are Seattle.

East coast: weather predictions are wrong 80% of the time.  West coast: weather predictions are wrong 100% of the time.

East coast: sparse driftwood.  West coast: driftwood piles everywhere.

East coast: all marinas accept reservations.  West coast: “Maybe we’ll have room when you get here, maybe we won’t.”

East coast: predictable river and lake currents.  West coast: tidal currents, which swirl around islands and through passages such as to make them completely incomprehensible.

Anyway, we left Port Townsend on Saturday with big plans for Everett.  Down around Whidbey Island again.  Whidbey Island’s Useless Bay may look pretty in nice weather, but in 1841 the Wilkes Expedition called it “useless” because exposure to storms made it unhelpful to mariners.  True fact.  We ain’t stopping in Useless Bay.

We’ve been dodging ferries for years, but up here the Washington State Ferry System has ’em everywhere.  Probably because there’re too many islands and too few bridges.

Dead channel markers look about the same on both coasts.

A couple of hours of gorgeous weather greeted us in Everett.  Locals were out and about, some even in shorts.  Crazy.  The hike up the hill provided a great view of the largest public marina on the west coast.

Also a really cool tree.

Yup, would’ve been a great day, if only Doug’s credit card hadn’t jumped out of his pocket on the walk.  But no worries.  Lots of stuff to do in Everett and we planned to do much of it.

However, again with the weather.  Not one but two “atmospheric rivers” were predicted, with the Sunday convergence to occur directly above our heads.  The Snohomish River was certain to flood, bringing all manner of death and destruction over the following three days.  Everett is on the Snohomish River.  And it’s starting to rain.  So one night in Everett, and one night only, was enough for now.

Saturday’s calm before the storm allowed us to head up towards the cool little hamlet of La Conner.  We toured the American Tug factory in La Conner when we first were looking for a Loop boat.  We stopped back by when we came up a few years later to look at a couple of Sabres.  Fun town.  And they have room on the dock right in town.  Woooo!

Hey, some more wildlife!  The real question is how the guy hidden back in there made it halfway to the top and through those crossbars, all without opposable thumbs.

This is why someone always needs to be watching the water.  That sucker would do some damage.

This is why you don’t steer to channel markers.  You might end up on the patio.

Now this is cool.  Based on Dana’s research, we’ve written him up as our first juvenile bald eagle.

Jumping ahead a few days, here’s one Dana got that’s all grown up.

Fort Whitman and its four small guns once sat at the Skagit Bay end of the Swinomish Channel, but after WWII it fell into disrepair.  Which kind of makes sense.  La Conner is cute and all, but not much of a military target unless American Tugs start carrying missiles.  Also not much left of the fort to see by water.

We first thought maybe a Naval Academy grad stuck the goat out there.  Or maybe someone wanted to honor the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.  But then we remembered that the Fort Whitman ruins are on Goat Island.  Duh.

We’d been a tad fearful of the channel, but mostly a non-event.

This, however, looks quite risky.

Not the dog.  The dog can swim.  But if one of us were on the other board that orange Hydroflask would be long gone.

Whew!  We made it to La Conner!

This commercial rig proves once and for all that the only difference between a Sea Wolf and a Sea Mole is a small amount of rust.

The problem for us, of course, was that certain death and destruction from the impending storm also awaited anyone docked, er, moored along the Swinomish Channel.  La Conner is on the Swinomish Channel.  So screw it.  We’ll ride things out from the relative safety of Cap Sante.  Head on up to Anacortes.

One might think this to be a nondescript photo of birds standing on snags in very shallow water.  Nope.  It’s a visual pun.

Yup, cool scenery, even on gloomy days.  Or maybe particularly on gloomy days.

Know what else you don’t see along the Atlantic seaboard?  Ships with names like “Polar Adventure.”

We’ve been on a little roll in terms of hitting festivals and such, and our luck continued in Anacortes.  Before the weather chased everyone off, the Waterfront Festival was a-hoppin’.  In an unexpected plot twist, however, we didn’t buy anything.  Not even kettle corn.

Then the rain came.  Normal people like us stayed warm and dry and used Starlink to stream the NCAA baseball and softball tournaments.  Only sailors were out.  Because sailors by definition are batshit crazy.

Upon further reflection, however, perhaps a little rain isn’t anything to complain about.

As per usual, the dramatic warnings about floods and death and destruction were dramatically overblown.  The rain might’ve sucked for little black dogs who had to pee and poop on the shore, but no floods.  No deaths.  No destruction.  Even the 40-knot winds only lasted one day and failed to blow anything off the boat.  Mostly a big meh.

Glorious sun and warmth have been so hard to find that we scarcely knew what do when yesterday and today came along.  Picture perfect days, dampened only by those nagging exterior chores.  Whatever.  We still managed to squeeze in some good dog walks and meals in town.  Also, about fifteen miles of scootering took us not only to scenic paths and public art, but also our favorite muffin store in the whole wide world.

Our Winnipegger friend Brenda—who likely would be famous if she wasn’t so anonymous—recently requested more Sammy content.  We figure accommodating her is the least we can do, what with the ass-kicking in pickleball and Code Names we plan to administer when she and Trevor come to visit in a few weeks.  So here’s our little guy in the Oscar Memorial Cruising Position.

And here’s the trip animation, although we’re not sure anyone but us finds them worthwhile.

To confirm the awesomeness of the happy part of this post, we wrap it up with the Anacortes Seal of Approval.

Now the bad part about Anacortes.  Anacortes is where we learned that Doug’s good friend Larry Davis had passed away after what should’ve been routine knee surgery.  Larry was the girls’ orthodontist, Jimmy’s dad, and a fixture on Tennessee football trips.  We’re left with many great memories, but memories aren’t enough.  RIP Pop.

On June 15, 1859, a British pig—whose name is lost to history but we’re calling him “Percy”—foolishly chose to eat an American potato in the San Juan Island garden of one Lyman Cutlar.  Cutlar—understandably upset at his loss of produce—shot and killed Percy, thereby starting “The Pig War.”  The seeds to the problem were planted in the 1849 Oregon Treaty, which set the boundary between England’s frigid lands and the United States’ fertile lands as “the middle of the channel”—but failed to identify the “channel” at issue.  Since the San Juan Islands sit between the Haro Strait and the Rosario Strait, both countries claimed them.  Percy’s murder triggered everyone to roll in gunships and troops and artillery and prepare for battle.  The American side camped at what’s now cleverly known as “American Camp.”  The information center pictured above is all that remains, although it probably wasn’t as fancy back then.   Essentially nobody did much else until the matter was resolved in favor of the good guys in 1872.  Which is why when we reached Friday Harbor we paid for lunch with real dollars.

The obvious point of all that, of course, that that Ol’ Lyman shot Percy just about five miles south of where we spent a few days.*

On Christmas Eve, 1969, astronaut Bill Anders took an iconic color photo of earth as he and his two crew mates on Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit the moon.

The obvious point of all that, of course, is that just about the time we were passing the south end of Orcas Island on our way to Friday Harbor from Anacortes, the single engine plane Anders was flying by himself crashed into the water just six miles north of us.  Lots of Coast Guard chatter on the radio.  Days later on our way to Deer Harbor we passed by the folks pulling up wreckage.  Very sad.

San Juan was our first of the San Juan Islands to visit, but on the way we passed a bunch of others.

This little guy is Willow Island.  Willow Island looks pretty much like the rest of them.

Now back to Friday Harbor, where we spent several days either sitting on the boat or exploring, depending on the weather.  Here’s Serendipity, a used bookstore where the ghost of an unidentified woman haunts an old home that dates to 1892, although it’s also possible that the ghost story is just a marketing ploy.**

The San Juan Inn, built in 1880, once sat adjacent to this vacant lot.  Even after Windermere Realty turned the building into an office, the disembodied spirit of Walter—“a short, pudgy fellow with a smile and a mustache, dressed in a grey flannel suit and hat” continued to roam the halls.  No word on where Walter went after April 6, 2022, when Whidbey Island dirtball Dwight Henline set the fire that burned it down.

Here’s a fun coincidence that has nothing to do with ghosts.  Our McDowell Mountain Ranch pickleball buddy Dan’s boat Little Nellie—named in honor of his two oldest granddaughters Nell and Ellie, a portmanteau, if you will—tied up behind us in Friday Harbor.  Fun dinner with his awesome family.

Ellie wasn’t with them, but Nell peered out the window as they headed out.

Lots of interesting stuff around San Juan Island, but virtually none of it is within electric scooter range.  Fortunately Susie rents slightly faster conveyances.  By the time we did the entire circumference and some side roads, we were ready to join a motorcycle club.  If only the Hell’s Angels accepted women.

Along the way we passed right by the site of Lyman Cutlar‘s potato patch.  Doug had marked it on the map so he could take a photo.  Nope.  We blew right past it on the side trip down to the Cattle Point Lighthouse.

The famous lavender farm has closed down, and we also failed to take photos of the alpacas.  To add more insult, we went right by English Camp, where, you guessed it, the English camped while awaiting the opportunity to shoot Americans because of the pig.  And also, you guessed it, we forgot to take any photos.  However, we did stop for snacks at The Blowhole, “blowhole” being one of those words that sounds dirty but isn’t.

Hey look!  Sammy’s first dinghy ride!  He seemed neither impressed nor worried, which we suppose is a good thing.

Seaplanes flitting about made flying the drone seem unreasonably sketchy, so it stayed on the boat.

We mostly were okay with our spot on D Dock.  Nice and quiet.

Except the walk to shore literally was over a third of a mile.  That’s just too far to carry a dog who’s afraid of uneven surfaces.

Next stop, Deer Harbor on Orcas Island.  More scenic San Juan Islands along the way.

There are at least three pods of resident orcas in the area, so one might logically assume Orcas Island’s name somehow is related.  One who assumed that would be wrong.  Orcas—as in island—is short for “Horcasitas,” who was the Spanish viceroy with a silly name who commissioned an exploration of the area in 1791.   But either way we made it to Deer Harbor.

Not much happening at Deer Harbor, so we took one of the island’s two rental cars for a bop around.  The largest town is Eastsound.  Charming little place.

Eastsound is home of the historic Emmanuel Episcopal Church, which was to be built as a saloon in 1885 but then as now religious zealots waged political warfare to stifle anyone with the temerity to disagree with their self-centered view of morality.  So it became a church instead.

The Episcopalians we know have no qualms about drinking alcohol, however, so maybe they just wanted the awesome view out the back for themselves.

Just down the road sits the old Crow Valley School, which began educating the island children in 1888.

The high point of Orcas Island, however, is the high point of Orcas Island.  Actually, Mount Constitution is the highest point in all the San Juans.  Obviously we had to get up there.  The view is well worth the effort, although again, Sammy didn’t seem overly impressed.

After a nice trip around the island and up the mountain, a lovely dinner at Kingfish Inn was just the way to finish off Dana’s 22nd birthday.

Sammy may be unemotional about a lot of things, but not the last shore leave of the day.  That gets him every time.  Somehow he thinks running to the front of the boat will allow him to go straight to bed.  But no.  It sucks to be portable.

Up in these parts, seeing an AGLCA burgee is about as likely as finding a Sasquatch.  Or an Alabama fan with a full set of teeth.  When you bumble across one, you’ve got to investigate.  Which is a good thing, because two sets of Loopers—who earned gold burgees a couple of years ago—stopped by when they saw ours.  Very nice folks.  In Deer Harbor to go shrimping.  Later they dropped off a bag of deliciousness they caught that very morning, allowing us to whip up an Old Bay shrimp boil that was even better than Kingfish Inn.  Loopers are the best.

A couple of final Deer Harbor notes.  The singer from just outside Dana’s hometown of Austin was pretty cool, although we could’ve done without all the pandering to the little kid who demanded attention.

Way too late for us to make full use of it, we discovered a cool path, with cool views, that passed by houses we’d never be able to afford.

Most importantly, Sammy and Doug have cheered the mighty Diamond Vols into pole position at the College World Series.

Today we shoved off for Rosario.  Past Massacre Bay, where Stickeen warriors slaughtered Lummi men and took Lummi women and children for slaves.  It happened in 1858, however, which probably is why there aren’t any actual crime scene photos on the internet.  A quick shot up the bay was the best we could do.

Blind Bay is a well-regarded anchorage, and since our path took us about fifty yards from the entrance we popped in.  The anchor held long enough for us to eat lunch and toss the drone up and probably would’ve held even longer but we left.

Next post will have some Rosario notes.  This post is too long as it is.

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* Despite losing the islands, a residue from the British occupation remains.  Friday Harbor, for example, takes its name from Hudson Bay Company shepherd Joe Friday, long before he became an LAPD Sergeant and partnered with Officer Bill Gannon, who himself later became Colonel Sherman T. Potter.  “All we want are the facts, ma’am.”  (That’s all very true, except for the part about Dragnet and M*A*S*H.)

** On a very tenuously-connected note, in the under-appreciated John Cusak classic movie Serendipity, Lars’ shehnai music sucked and the kid in the devil costume deserved to be punched in the head.

“Next to the Brown Lantern, Rosario has the best food in the Islands,” offered Jeff, our friend from No Drama who cruised these grounds a few years ago. “Be sure to catch the organ concert at Rosario,” added his lovely wife Ann.  Frankly, given the circumstances, we found their recommendations a tad mean-spirited, although we allow for the possibility they weren’t aware that the resort’s new owners are deep in renovations so nothing is open.  No restaurant, no organ.  Grrrr.

Rich dude Robert Moran completed his palatial home in 1909, and filled it with stained glass, the huge pipe organ, and a fabulous collection of historical photographs, among other must-see things.  “The Red Lady”—yet another of the area’s ghosts—flits around the mansion, at least according to silly people who believe in such things.  We missed all of it.  Double grrrr.

But the grounds are pretty, so at least there’s that.

Here’s a white pine figurehead that once adorned the 1874 clipper ship America.  “It had many times in many ports been remarked upon as being one of the most artistic figureheads that ever graced the bow of a ship,” according to the plaque.  Given all those qualifiers that’d be a tough claim to prove or disprove, but it is pretty cool, and remarkably well-preserved.

At least the marina is cute enough.  Pleasantly empty, likely because everything else is closed.

Remember the Maeda Escarpment from Mel Gibson’s docu-drama Hacksaw Ridge, where the Army’s 77th Infantry climbed up the cliff with ropes and then were blown apart by the Japanese and then Seventh-Day Adventist superhero Desmond Doss lowered the wounded survivors to safety?  Straight vertical.  The path from Rosario to Cascade Lake is just as steep but much longer.  The trim one of us who hikes and runs wanted to do the circumference trail, however, so she lured the fat one of us off his recliner with the promise of Lopez Island ice cream at the snack stand up by the lake.   We left Sammy on the boat, tending to his carrot patch.

Once we got to the top without needing a medic, the miles around the lake were awesome.

Lopez Island ice cream is to the San Juans as Kawartha ice cream is to Ontario’s lake region.  Delicious, although the people who drove to Cascade Lake in their comfy cars probably enjoyed it even more.

Anyway, despite our lack of rappelling gear we somehow made it safely back down to Rosario, where Sammy had finished his gardening and was napping in his blanket pile.

Under brilliant skies and with one heart atwitter over the upcoming rematch with Florida State in the CWS, on Wednesday we headed off for Lopez Island.  Lopez Island surprisingly takes its name from Spanish explorer Gonzalo López de Haro and not former Fly Girl J.Lo, even though she’s undoubtedly much more famous.  Hopefully she and Ben Affleck can work things out.

For us, the first most important thing about Lopez Island was the terrifying entrance to Fisherman Bay.  Narrow shallow channel.  Concealed rocks.  Many stories of boats aground or dashed to pieces.  We were so worried that we didn’t take a single photo of the trip or the approach.  But we did get the drone up shortly after arriving.

The Vols won, punching their ticket to the championship series and sparing us a night of despair and ensuring that the sun indeed came up the next morning.

The walk into town took us past a bank of Pantone 151C colored flowers.  An omen, perhaps?

Lopez Villege is the main—meaning only—town on the island.  Very small, but with a surprising number of excellent restaurants.

If you don’t want to take the main road, there’s a more peaceful option.

Lopez Village has some pretty cool stuff.  Like an awesome farmer’s market, where we picked up very important items like mushrooms, pickles, strawberries, soap, and a Lopez Island Library hat to support the fundraiser.  We particularly appreciated the rule that vendors only can vend things grown or made on the island.

Now this is way cool.  The one of us who has seen every episode of Blown Away chatted up the glass guys in the hot shop.  Dana bought a glass starfish that we previously weren’t aware we needed.

No offense to Jeff, but we went to the Brown Lantern.  The Brown Lantern isn’t even close to the best place we’ve eaten up here.  Setsunai in Lopez Village, however, is right up near the top.  The only thing bad about dinner at that joint was the gluttonous mile waddle back home.

Lopez Island also is the home of—wait for it, wait for it—Lopez Island Ice Cream!

Know who else likes Lopez Island ice cream?

Up here daylight sticks around until after our bedtime, but we sometimes catch the fading glow just as it reaches the color of the daisies on The Hill in front of Ayers Hall.

Deep in the island interior, past Hummel Lake, freshly cut fields, and scenic farms, Barn Owl Bakery cranks out delicious fresh bread using only Lopez Island ingredients.  They don’t sell retail until the new batch leaves the ovens at precisely 3:30.  By 3:30, there was a line, but we still scored the loaf that we polished off with ease the following morning.

On our scooter ride out to Fisherman Bay Preserve we noticed that many islanders take pride in their mailboxes.  Here’s a little sample of the artistry.

Saturday was cruise-e-bikes-around-the-island day.  After the market, we found our way out to Shark Reef Sanctuary.

Waaaay out there on that San Juan Island point in the distance is Cattle Point Lighthouse, which we last saw one post ago when Dana was in her biker chick phase.

Center Church is impressive, not only because it’s the oldest one on the island, but also because—if the sign is any evidence—the good folks in St. Francis Parish hold no grudge over the whole Reformation thing.

Here’s something new.  A dog running a farm stand.

This morning, the tide table pressured us to leave relatively early so as to avoid getting stuck or sinking.  On our way out we passed by something else we’ve not seen before: a boat worth less than its fenders.

The tannish land off to the right here is Speiden Island.

In the seventies, the owner populated it with big game animals and birds and built a hunting lodge where he and his guests could stay before killing them.  The operation ended quickly, however, in part because bullets flew across the narrow channel to San Juan Island, which was populated by people.  Whatever animals weren’t killed supposedly have reproduced and flourished, although we didn’t see any.

For at least the second time—River Dunes being the other—we docked directly facing a chapel of some sort.

The chapel may become obsolete as soon as tomorrow, however, because if the Vols lose the College World Series championship to Texas A&M, it effectively will prove there is no God.

Here’s the trip from Rosario to Roche Harbor, where we’ll stay for a few days.

Freddy Mercury’s anthem couldn’t be more apt.  The mighty Volunteers vanquished the city boys pretending to be cowboys pretending to be soldiers and their cringy “yell leaders” to secure Tennessee’s first baseball National Championship.  Crazy awesome.  And all the people in the little chapel said “Amen.”

Now back to Roche Harbor.  This post is limited to Roche Harbor because tomorrow we’re crossing the border into the Great White North again, although oddly we’re heading south to do it.  Canada deserves its own posts.  Plus, Roche Harbor is cool enough to be singled out.

Remember the Pig War?  During those twelve years when the British and the Americans were waiting on opposite ends of San Juan Island for battle orders, the Limeys decided to build a great lime production operation at Roche Harbor to prevent scurvy and to facilitate their heavy margarita consumption.  What?  That’s a different kind of lime?  Well at least that explains the kilns.

Lime production here continued after the Americans took over and continued basically until 1956, by which time all the trees needed to fuel the furnaces were gone.  So Roche Harbor became a fabulous resort community instead.

The Hotel de Haro—built in 1886 by the dude who started the Tacoma and Roche Harbor Lime Company—is the resort centerpiece.  There’s a roche motel joke in there someplace but we’re too fond of this place to work it out.

The San Juan Islands Sculpture Park up by the airstrip “is home to over 150 unique creations by emerging and world-renowned sculptors.”  It indeed is pretty neat.

We’re guessing that the guy who made the piece on the left has had “beep, beep” running through his head ever since.

The park is soliciting names for the thing with the open jaws if anyone has a good idea.

This is “Soundhenge,” which would be a great place to insert the relevant reference to This is Spinal Tap if we hadn’t already used it on the sundial henge we found in Burlington, Vermont.

These are fake sheep.

These are not fake sheep.  These are hay bales we passed on what turned out to be a seven-mile loop out to English Camp, which was necessary because we zoomed past it on our previous adventure.

The English Camp visitor center isn’t quite as posh as the one at American Camp, but there still are structures and a formal garden to visit.  The British clearly took more pride in their compound than did the Yanks, who basically lived in squalor.

Exhausted though we were, somehow we made it back.

By the way, that chapel on the hill at Roche Harbor—dating to 1887—is dedicated to Our Lady of Good Voyage.  By biblical reckoning, Mary died some 2,000 years ago.  It’s hard to understand how she gets all these obligations placed on her now.  Who even knows?  Maybe she once had a near-death experience with some Florida jackass on a Viking Sportfish in an ICW no-wake zone and thereafter hated all things boats and boaters.  Also, isn’t Christopher the patron saint of traveling and travelers?  Does that double the protection of voyagers?  Or do they cancel each other out?  Very confusing.  But the chapel is cute enough, and will hold 80 wedding guests if rain drives the blessed event out of the garden.

Turns out Roche Harbor is quite the wedding machine.  Every day, another wedding.  Which means every day, another wedding reception band playing the same songs a hundred yards from Tumbleweed.  We have no idea why they all insist on the bastardized Chris Stapleton version of “Tennessee Whiskey” rather than the classic original David Allen Coe version later made famous by The Possum, but it’s abominable.  Anyway, one lucky couple made their escape in cute li’l June Bug.  We didn’t get to watch the departure so can’t verify where their prankster friends tied the tin cans.

“Hey, what’s that sound?  Everybody look what’s going down.”  Stephen Stills may have been talking about guns and war, but the delightful and familiar “pop, pop, pop” from shore sounded to us a lot like pickleball, so we dug out our shoes and paddles and wandered over.  Nice folks.  Big fun, but “Don’t hit it hard at Betty.  She doesn’t like it when you do that.”

Speaking of Burlington, Vermont, remember the fancy mausoleum where Chuck and Jann Perkins will rest when they finally pass on?  They’ve got nothing on Old Man John McMillin—the aforementioned rich dude who owned the lime company that made him rich—and the mausoleum where he and his family are interred.   Apparently the edifice is full of Masonic symbolism.  The columns, for example, supposedly duplicate those in King Solomon’s Temple.  Frankly we find this claim a bit sketchy because (1) there are no extant blueprints or as-builts from 1,000 BCE, and (2) nobody knows the precise length of a “cubit.”  Maybe he channeled the Widow’s Son.  It’s impressive either way, however, and either way the halibut and sole at McMillin’s Dining Room was delicious.

Every night at 9, the Roche Harbor staff “Retire the Colors” with great fanfare.  “O Canada” when lowering the Maple Leaf.  The recently-modified “God Save the King” when lowering the Union Jack.  “To the Colors” when Old Glory comes down, followed by “Taps” and congratulations to guests who just got married or divorced or are celebrating something else.  And a cannon blast that makes Sammy jump every time.  Stirring.

Yup, Roche Harbor is fantastic.  Very high up on the list of coolest places we’ve visited, by boat or otherwise.

No animated cruising map this post, because, well, we didn’t go anywhere.

Note:  Our friend Bill—an illogically-proud Kentuckian and long-time blog follower—advised us that Desmond Doss actually was a member of the 77th Infantry.  Bill should know, since his father was in the 96th.  We’ve made the appropriate correction to the last post.  The sheer verticality of our hike up to Cascade Lake, however, remains entirely factual.