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Mark & Connie's 2015 Vacation

Friday 28th, 2015

We took the ferry from Anacortes, WA to San Jaun Island.  The ferry trip is 35 minutes.  We decided to not take the car over.  We had some thoughts of renting motor scooters, but that would have cost $70 per hour and it was threatening rain.  We passed on the motor scooters and toured the whale museum. Then we took the public transportation van to the other side of the Island


Connie enjoying the ferry ride to San Juan Island


The main cabin of the ferry. Very comfortable and quite.
San Juan Island map
The ferry arrives at Friday Harbor and that's where are of the shops and restaurants are, and the Whale Museum.  We took the van over to Lime Kiln Point State Park, as that is supposed to be the best chance for spotting a whale.  But as one local said, "don't count on it, it's pretty sketchy."  I told Connie we weren't going to see any whales.

At Lime Kiln Point, we walked down to the little viewing area at the shore and there were maybe 6 to 10 other people.  In a little bit, an older guy was there sitting on the picnic table and we started talking with him.  He said he came and watched for whales every Friday.   He said the best times in his experience were around noon and 3 PM, but he said, "but don't take that to the bank.  The whales come by when they want." 

Then a boat went by headed south pretty fast.  He said, that's a whale watching boat.  That might mean that they are headed to some whales.  They might be headed this way.  And then maybe 10 minutes later, another whale watching boat went by.  He again, said that it might amount to something, and then again, it might not.

Light house at Lime
              Kiln Point
The light house at Lime Kiln Point.  While we were waiting on the whales, we walked over to the lighthouse and took photos and poked around.   Just about the time we were ready to leave the lighthouse (we probably would have left the park had a van been available) I overheard this woman say that the boats went by (meaning the whale watching boats) "and now they're coming."  So we hightailed it back to the whale watching area (not that you have to be in any one spot, but the guy we had been talking with had been there).   We no more than got there than whales started going by.

Orcas
One of the perhaps a dozen or more groups of whales we saw. 

Orcas and a whale
              watching boat
The same group as above, with the whale watching boat in view.   This was one of the boats that went by going south at high speed, which suggested that they might be after whales.

Orca close
This is the closest shot I got.  This is similar to the above that has been tightly cropped so that it is a close up here.  We did see one whale "spyhopping" where they put their head up out of the water and look around.  That was cool.  We never saw any really jump out of the water, but some of them did breach fairly high once in a while.

The Kitsap. We rode this ferry back to Anacortes. I counted 130 vehichles coming off it when it unloaded at San Juan Island. This was smaller than the big one we rode in the morning.
Vacation Index
Saturday the 22nd
Sunday the 23rd
Monday, 24th
Tuesday, 25th
Wednesday, 26th
Thursday, 27th
Friday 28th
Saturday 29th


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