We headed north to get onto the islands. Traffic through the city is bad! Everyone is excited at the possibility of seeing whales. Promise to put up pictures soon!
July 20 – Onto the Islands
The drive up to Anacortez is quite long – especially driving through central Seattle traffic. We caught the express ferry mid afternoon and sailed straight through to San Juan Island. I was amazed at how developed the island is. Friday Harbor is huge and the shore is covered in houses. As we drove across the island we saw lots of farmland. It is quite hilly as well. We arrived at the park and the ranger took one look at our camper and thought it was larger than the 25’ restriction. He got out his measuring wheel only to discover we were in the limit. He implied that our campsite would be difficult to get into because it was so small, but the only problem was getting everything level. Our site backed on to forest so we felt really private. We looked out over tents towards the water. While we were eating dinner the first spotting of Orca occurred. We dropped everything and went down to the shore to watch them swim by. What a joy to see them! The whole campground was there watching them. Ant later found a baby harbor seal on the beach – the beach was then closed to prevent anybody disturbing it. There are no waves, but we do get large swells hitting the island when the large ship pass on the inner passage to Alaska. The Haro Strait west of the island is deep and it comes real close to the island. The Orca follow the salmon, who are migrating to the Frazer River to spawn, and this brings them close to shore. The 3 resident pods of Orca eat salmon, but the transient pods eat seals. The small island in front of the campground is an animal refuge and one can see seals sunbathing there at low tide. Seals make a lot of noise at times – they splash around in the water flapping their tails. The sunset was wonderful.
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