San Juan Summer

          From about ages 12 to 17, I would spend most of my summer with my parents (and sometimes other family members) on our boat, The Carefree.  We would make the long trip north up the coast of Washington to cruise the waters around Puget Sound and Vancouver Island, Canada.  Boating has always been a special part of my life, and I have really fond memories of those summers.  Of course I liked to complain about how terrible it was to be stuck on a boat for 5 weeks in the middle of nowhere with my parents during my teenage years.  But now that I am a parent, I have a feeling it was a lot harder for them!

          Regardless, one of the areas we first visited was the beautiful San Juan Islands.  Even though they are part of Washington, the islands feel like you are completely away from it all.  As a kid, I took all this Pacific Northwest beauty for granted.  But particularly while I was living in Prague, I felt  homesick for the Northwest and put it on my list of places to visit when we moved back to the States.  Seven years and two kids later ... we get to spend a week in the San Juans!  
          Obviously things have changed a bit since 1988:  my parents have been boating in Mexico for almost 20 years and our family has grown a bit.  :)  So renting a house for a week was the best way to enjoy the islands this time around.  We chose San Juan Island, the most developed island, because there was plenty for us to do, but still get away from it all.  And we invited my parents to join us, since they hadn't been back there in 20+ years either. 

          My parents van was big enough to accommodate all of us and all the stuff we were bringing.   To break up the six hour drive and ferry ride, we drove to Seattle and visited our good friends, Sue and Joe and their baby Brody.  It was great seeing them, and we got to visit Alki Beach, play at a park, and have an wonderful dinner with them.  We drove a bit farther that evening and spent the night in Mount Vernon, Washington, so we could easily catch the ferry from Anacortes to San Juan Island in the morning.  My dad actually lived in Mount Vernon as a kid for a few years, so he enjoyed driving through the old town.

          We got lucky the next day catching an earlier ferry to the island, and we also got really lucky with the weather.  We had clear blue skies and a high of 70 degrees every day.... perfect!  The ferry ride was fun and was nice for the girls to be able to run around.  We found a great house on the water that had room for all of us and space for the kids to explore freely.  I was hoping it would be as nice and relaxing as it looked in the pictures, and it was!  It was so peaceful, the air was so fresh, and I couldn't get over how quiet it was!   You don't really realize how much noise and business is constantly around you, until you get away from it all.  The house was in the woods a bit, and had a long grassy lawn down to Garrison Bay. While we didn't have access to a dock, we could muck around on the shore, watch birds, and enjoy the view of all the boats in the harbor.   We had impromptu soccer games and hide and seek on the lawn, cigars (for the guys) and drinks overlooking the bay, evening deer watching, and nice adult dinners after the girls were in bed.  An added bonus was the owners of the home lived next door and would bring us fresh-baked treats every morning we were there!  The wife is Italian and loves to cook, so we spent one evening at their house at a pizza-making class.  Despite having two active, little girls who keep the same schedule regardless if it's vacation or not, to enjoy all of this for an entire week was such a treat! 

          We did spend a lot of time relaxing at the house, but there was plenty to do on the island, giving us reasons to go on little excursions each day.  We were quite close to charming Roche Harbor.  I remember visiting it when we were on our boat.  The marina has grown dramatically, but the quaint little village looks the same with its main store and old hotel.  We strolled the docks and found many Grand Banks, the type of boat my parents have.  I even saw the marina laundry and showers, where I probably visited back when I was a kid.  We had a terrific lunch, sitting on the deck in the sunshine, overlooking the marina.  July 8 was our 12th wedding anniversary, so Sam made reservations at the fancy restaurant, and we enjoyed a fabulous meal, watching the sun set and the employees do the evening color guard/flag salute.  As they marched out there, music played, a cannon went off, and Sam kept saying it was a little bit like Kellerman's (from the movie Dirty Dancing).  All part of the charm!  Roche Harbor also has a playground and pool (which I never got to visit when I was a kid!), so Sam and I took the girls there later in the week to burn off some energy.

Happy 12th Anniversary!

          Other fun day trips we made were to Lime Kiln Park, a shoreline park where you can watch whales.  We visited the lighthouse, walked along the rocky cliffs, spotted a harbor seal, but didn't spot any whales.  From there, we headed to a lavender farm for a lunch.  Lavender and a picnic: two of my favorite things!  The girls had fun running down the rows of lavender, I loved browsing the shop with every lavender product you could imagine, and we all enjoyed a picnic in the sun.  There was an alpaca farm nearby so that made another little trip with the girls, who were fascinated with these sweet little creatures.  And for a bit of history, we visited the English Camp, where British soldiers had a camp in the mid-1800s while the US and England figured out who would get to own the islands.  Morgan is just starting to get a sense of the "olden days," but it was mainly yet another place for them to run around. 

Whale watching at Lime Kiln Park

At the Alpaca Farm

On vacation you can have ice cream for lunch!

English Camp

Morgan teaches Sasha to make a wish!

          One of my favorite parts of the trip was sea kayaking!  I will kayak any chance I get, and the San Juans are a great place to do it.  While my parents watched the girls, we went out for a few hours with a group and paddled Haro Straights, which several pods of orca whales spend lots of time in throughout the year, but especially the summer.  We were really lucky to have perfect weather and see lots of whildlife.  We spotted a bald eagle, paddled through kelp beds, and watched some seals snoozing in the kelp.  But the highlight was near the end of the tour when we saw a pod of orcas cruise by!  They were pretty far away, but their tall black fins were unmistakable.  

         Wait, just when I think I have covered it all, I remember more things we did or saw!  Like spending time in cute Friday Harbor, the main town on the island.  We did some touristy shopping, ate our share of seafood, and visited the marina where "Popeye" the seal lives.  Morgan got to feed her some fish from the fish market, and we got to eat yummy fresh crab cocktails!  And while I said we had perfect weather, we did until the last night when we had a huge thunderstorm that lasted all night and knocked out the power, which is a petty rare thing for this part of the country.

         
          Honestly, though, the best part was making memories together as a family.  Watching our girls spend time with their grandparents, and seeing my parents get to know the girls better was so perfect.  My dad introduced his famous "1-2-3 toss you into bed" trick that he did with me when I was a kid.  The girls loved that, of course, and Sasha kept asking "three?"  My mom did puzzles with Morgan and looked for animals outside (including banana slugs).  Morgan was more adventurous than I gave her credit for.  She loved mucking around on the shore during low tide and catching hermit crabs with me.  She didn't mind holding them, and named the first one we caught "Ron Holloway"!  Sasha was full of toddler energy and laughing all the time.  She turned into a natural comedian with her grandparents as a perfect audience.  She also learned to express herself, talking more, and even shouting "No!" when things weren't going her way.  Traveling with kids is getting easier, I think, probably because I have adjusted my expectations to make sure we all have a good vacation!

Our week in the San Juan Islands was all that I was hoping for and much more.  Not only did it offer so many new and wonderful memories as a family, but it also brought back many old ones.  I suppose the only thing missing was the Carefree.  So while we didn't get to explore the water on a boat, everything seemed very familiar and comforting to me:  the intense green of the forests, the endless coves and inlets, the salty-diesel smell of the docks, and the peace and quiet of being away from civilization.  Only this time...it was all my idea!