Day 219 - Anchors Aweigh

 Now here's the fun part, I get to look through the tens of pictures we took each day and decide what is worth sharing or at least what captures the day's activities.  Since the next 16 days or so was all of us no more than 65 ft away from each other and since we had a healthy dose of activity on all but our transit days, we pretty much had quality family time and exercise each day.  Even though our transit days were low activity, there were many days on vacation where we packed in enough exercise to more than cover for these days.  In my opinion anyway.  I will focus more on something worth sharing from each day. 

My memory from day 219 is fog, gray and pouring rain.  I remember being disappointed that my brother would not get to see the spectacular scenery as we traveled all the way through the San Juan Islands and into Canada.  He didn't know what he was missing and I knew I just had to be patient and that the scenery would be even more breath taking in Desolation Sound, our destination.  When you've seen how beautiful it can be in the Islands, it is disappointing to have visitors not see it in all its glory. Jonathan took a ton of pictures on our stop for fuel at Friday Harbor.  Later on that day, he realized he did not bring the charger for his camera battery, so his camera was pretty much useless for the remainder of the trip. We cleared customs at Bedwell Harbour, South Pender Island, BC and anchored for the night in Montague Harbor, galiano Island, BC.

Just went through the locks, girls still in their pjs

If we go back to the start of our morning, we got up at O'dark thirty and headed for the locks.  We had to wait awhile for the small lock to open and I don't think I've ever seen so many salmon jumping. It was quite a show.  My brother Jonathan got his first taste of what crewing the boat was going to be like.  This direction through the locks was pretty easy for those of us helping, for John it was hard because the boat stretched across pretty much the entire width of the lock which makes manuevering very tricky.

Oh, this is going to be hard limiting the stories I tell about each day. But I did journal as I we went, and I'll need to go back and review that now, but hopefully my writings on the trip will suffice for what I want to record here in this blog. Below is the surprisingly for me brief account of the day from my journal.

Saturday Aug 7 – rain rain rain, Friday Harbor, pouring rain.  Customs at Bedwell.  Anchor at Montague.  On the boat all day.

Waiting at the customs dock at Bedwell Harbour, note the pouring rain

Day 152 - Back to Reality

Time to go back home.  This is my least favorite day of boat trips.  Lots of cleaning and coming home to a house that also needs to be cleaned.  The girls always enjoy helping Daddy wash the boat though.  Got a great shot of the Teagan, looking super cute in the life jacket our girls once wore.  The shot below is all I could get of the Denmark sailboat mentioned in yesterday's post.  It is the one tucked behind the tug.  We were cruising out of the marina at the time.  One thing I do love about this time of year is how late it stays light.  I had plenty of time to get in a run when we got home.

Day 151 Part 2 - Hey is that sun?

John doing his best impression of a gondola guy

For a brief 15 min stint, the clouds had opened up, the sun was shining, and coats were off.  We even moved the folding chairs to the dock and brought out the snacks and magazines . . . and then it was gone. We were sure the weather was going to start improving so we got the girls dressed in their swim clothes and headed off in the dinghy to find our own private island to play on, there are a couple of state owned islands in West Sound.  We found our spot. Mom and Dad managed to get in a little relaxing and reading and Hannah and Haley did some net fishing and they actually caught some miniature fish and jelly fish.  Soon enough, the rain came in and we headed back to the marina just in time for the rain to stop.  we were rewarded with some of the most vivid rainbows I have ever seen. As the night fell, and the rain appeared to stop, we walked the kids around the docks to get out some energy.  We got to see an old sailboat that had been made in the old family ship yard in Denmark.   It was in terrible shape, so John really didn't want to see it. It was amazing to think that it had once been crafted by his relatives in Denmark.  We hadn't been out for too long before the rain began again and it was time to go to sleep.

Day 151 Part 1

Off to another side of Orcas Island.  We moved over to West Sound.  We knew it would be pretty quiet, especially since this was monday afternoon of the 3 day weekend and most vacationers would be headed home.  They advertised guest moorage and they had it, but it was much different than the "resort" that we had just moved from.  This was a utilitarian marina, more a place for islanders to keep their boats than a vacation destination.  The Evening Magazine plane flew in and out of the marina. That was the bizarre thing. The marina was desolate, but every so often, a person or two would show up and soon after a float plane buzzed and out. It would drop off people and they would just disappear.

Tobin and John had read in the boat guide that there was an island bus we could catch to take us to one of the main shopping/dinind areas on the island. This was going to be our afternoon adventure.  Our first clue that the adventure wasn't going to go quite as planned was the fact that the harbor master (who lived at the marina) knew pretty much nothing about the bus except that it existed and that we could probably flag it down up by the road.  We headed back to the boats to get ready for our adventure. Sunscreen - check, hats - check, backpacks - check, rain gear - check, baby and kid gear - check.  We made sure we got up to the road 15 min earlier than the scheduled arrival and then we waited, and waited, and waited.  We couldn't get cell reception so Tobin went to the marina office to call the bus service, the office was empty.  There were were, all dressed up and no where to go.  We were sick of waiting and thought maybe we'd head into the "center" of West Sound.  Maybe we could at least get a meal at the cafe.  So, we set off down the road.  The center of town was 4, maybe 5 buidlings.  We finally got cell reception and found out the bus does in fact run at the time we thought . . . 3 weeks from now!The Cafe?  Closed on mondays!  We disappointedly turned around and went back to the marina.  We did find some fun and interesting things on our walk though, a little duck family (or were they geese?), farm implements, a sign to Katmandu, scultupres, a grumpy 4 year old.
 
 

Day 150 - Day of the Dogs

On and off rain, outside whenever possible. I got my 12 mile run in by doing 3 round trips on my now familiar 2 mile running route. I had been worried about dogs, but didn't encounter any the day before or the 5 times I had run by the houses near the end of the road on this morning. Then, on my very last pass of the houses when I was feeling much more confident, appearing out of nowhere was a big shaggy sheepdog. It was at my side and jumping up on me before I knew what happened. I think I figured out pretty quickly it was not going to bite me, but my adrenaline shot up none the less. I stopped running, not wanting it to chase me and figured it would follow me for a house or two, get out of its comfort zone and then go back home. We passed one property, then another, then another. I started running again and it just wouldn't go home. I was still thinking it had a very large area it was used to roaming and it would eventually go home. It would run up ahead, stop, jerk back and wait for me, then it would take off again. On one over zealous pass, it knocked me off my feet and I was not happy. I kept running. At one point, I made a turn onto the public path and it lost sight of me. I could see it looking back for me and I was so tempted to keep running. I figured it would eventually find it's way home. I was now less than a mile away from the marina and I felt responsible for it. I whistled to it, and it gladly spotted me and bounded over my way. I checked it for tags and there were severl phone numbers in it. The plan now was to keep it with me until we got back to the marina. When we got closer to the marina, I would periodically call to it and it was my happy little companion. It was great at staying to the side of the road and not too far away from me. I got nervous when we started to get near people and other dogs. To the outsider it looked like my dog, but I didn't know if I'd have enough control over it if another dog got too close. It followed me all the way down the dock but refused to go down the gang plank to the boats. The people up by the dock store probably thought I was weird when it had appeared to be mine as I led it down the dock, then I just left it. I got John and the girls and started explaining the story to them. We went back up to the dock store and I started explaining to everyone that it wasn't my dog. The harbor master overheard us trying to call the owner and she pretty much took over from there. John's cell had little reception, so she called on the marina phone, left a message and told us she'd leash up the dog and keep it until the owner was found. What a relief! While we were waiting for her to find a leash, we were holdnig the dog by the collar and several people came up and asked about what kind of dog it was, people were guessing a labradoodle. The girls loved their momentary dog. It turned out that the owner flagged down Tobin and Tara when they were walking along the road and asked if they had seen the dog. As a matter of fact we have, they replied.

We had to wait quite a while before we could get outside with the girls.  Their playtime on the beach was brief and ended in a down pour.  Once they were showered up and warm, we took them up to the public path to a house with an amazing number of hummingbird houses and lots of humming birds.  Look at the pic at the top of the post, does it get much better than this?  We ran into another dog up there.  It ran out from a yard and onto the path and started to follow us.  At least this time, we could hear it's owner call for it, and it was a cute little dog, the girls loved it.  They got to walk it back to its owner. John may have gotten in another walk by himself this day.

Day 149 - The start of a rainy holiday weekend

Again, still not caught up on my posts, so I'm writing this 2 weeks later.  Maybe it will actually be short and sweet, but I doubt it!  Just for the record, for the next 4 days when we are on the boat, we are not more than 24ft away from each other.  That's togetherness in my book.  Oh yeah, we actually did interact with each other too.

Day 149 - off to the islands, the San Juans, that is.  Deer Harbor on Orcas Island was our destination.  We were meeting up with Tobin, Tara, and Teagan.  We knew we were in for a rainy weekend and we'd have to get outside pretty much anytime it wasn't raining. We got settled in and then I took off for a 4 mile run.  The girls got to go on a dinghy ride with Daddy and played some Spinge Bob UNO.  I have only taken short walks from this marina, so I wasn't sure what the running situation was going to be like. I did know there was a short public trail and a narrow, (likely no shoulder) road in and out of the marina.  I had mapped out some running distances before I left home, but still, wasn't sure what the actual road would be like?  Trafic?  Dogs?  It turned out to be fine.  From the marina through the public trail and to the end of the road was exactly 2 miles, so I just ran multiples of this stretch.  John got to go out on his own for a walk along the public path and down to the buffalo farm that had no buffalo, only cows.  We took our pj-clad girls out on a night walk on a little trail bordering the beach by the marina.  It was perfect for them, it felt like we were in the woods, yet it was short in length.  It also led down to the beach so they got to look for crabs with flashlights. It's fun to watch them explore.