Back to Canada, well almost!!

We spent the first night of our San Juan trip camped at the Anacortes city campground, which was pretty nice, and went into town to the Rockfish for some tasty food and beer.  The following morning, after another trip into town for breakfast, we launched and headed over to Jones Island.  The motor over took a couple hours and we got to check out the central part of the San Juans.  Arriving at the camping dock we discovered that the place had gotten a bit more popular than my parents remembered.  All but one of the buoys and all but the loading dock space were filled.  After unloading the boat and setting up camp we were wondering if we would have to go through the pain of setting an anchor (the last buoy had filled) but then we noticed that the loading space where we were parked was loading only until 3 and it was 2.  After we had cleared 3pm and no one needed to use the space we headed out for a hike around the island.  Alexis found a water fountain with sufficient water pressure for any water needs.



Sitting around camp waiting for some water to boil we heard a noise on the hillside above us.  Turning to the sound we all watched in amazement as a sizable rock was rolling down the hill.  As the rock picked up speed it became apparent that it was targeting our camp kitchen and exciting things were about to happen.  In the battle between picnic table and high velocity boulder, the boulder had an unfair kinetic advantage, the results of which was a demolished kitchen area and one broken table.  We were fortunate that we had spread out over the entire campground (we ended up occupying 3 sites) and our kitchen was fairly far away from our chairs and tents.  The next day we toured around the islands and up the Juan De Fuca strait.  When we returned from our tour we all of the people in their giant live-aboard boats were amazed that we ventured so far and were worried about the weather and waves.  They did not seem like the explorative type of people, content sitting on the dock chit-chatting all day.  The weather improved and we enjoyed exploring the other half of our island.
 

We woke to a gorgeous day and decided to explore Sucia Island to the north.  Along the way Alexis practiced her modeling poses and we stopped in Friday Harbor where Alexis secretly bought the world’s smallest birthday cake for my mom.  We were going to camp another night or two but the marine forecast was calling for 20-30 knot (a knot being 1.51 miles for you non yacht club types) winds with gusts to 45.  We decided that sounded like no fun so the following day we headed back to Anacortes stopping on the way at Roche Harbor to see how the rich people live.  After walking around and spending almost $10 on two coffees we found that these were in fact not "our people".   We camped again at the Anacortes city park.  The next morning we went into town to check out the "Oyster Run", it should be noted that at the Oyster Run we saw no oysters and certainly nobody running.  We did see a lot of motorcycles and a lot of leather.

We had a great three weeks with my parents and appreciated that they let us take over their house for a while.  We are now preparing to leave my parents house (trying to get all of our stuff back into our truck--I think it may have expanded) for a week of backpacking in the Wallowa Mountains followed by 4-5 days in the Seven Devils area.