Kayaking San Juan

Eric and Sylvia go on a three day guided kayak trip around San Juan Island.

This shows a lot of the route that we took. We put in at Snug Harbor, kayaked around more or less clockwise, and camped both nights on Jones Island.This is the Springtree Restaurant in Friday Harbor. A friend of Eric's that owns it has had management problems and is selling it. We spent Friday night in a hotel close by.
Getting ready to take off on the kayaksOur guide, Christian
Here we're passing along a shipping channel as a huge container ship passes us.A colony of nesting birds. It really stunk around there! The white on the rocks is all bird droppings.
If you really strain here, you can see the seals resting on the rocks.Passing through a field of bull kelp. This was quite difficult to paddle through, but great to hold onto to anchor the kayak.
Eric and I in the kayak. We called it the "Crimson Tide".This house has a great location, with it's own beach, and an attached peninsula
Our first lunch on Posey Island. We were definately well fed on this trip!
Strolling around the island.
This was the view from the kayak a lot of the time.Coming up to our campsite on Jones Island. It's a state marine park, with a pretty active moorage there.
The deer on this island were almost domesticated. They would come right up to you if you had food and literally climb on you trying to get it. Apparently they even get into tents.
Another set of kayakers were camped on the south shore of the island.Taking a walk around the island, we sat down, and Eric leaned back onto a little cactus, native to the San Juans. Very painful! I was picking thorns out of his back that evening.
These cactus plants are quite inconspicuous.Some pictures of the madrona tree. Very beautiful, with bark that peels similar to a birch tree.
Some of them had weird knobs sticking out.
The western shoreline of the island.We found some USGS survey markers in rocks on the island.
Some pictures of Eric and me.
It doesn't show up very well in the picture, but it was a beautiful evening.
The outhouses on the island were very well set up. But they still stank.Mat and Erica eating dinner. Dinner was some kind of chicken curry, with a desert of cake cooked in an backpacking oven (with frosting of BUTTER, brown sugar, and nutmeg.)
This is a rock that was dislodged from the embankment when moving the picnic table around. Apparently it missed smashing our kayak by mere inches!Breakfast the next morning was omlets with salmon, avocado, sour cream, etc. Very rich.
Christian cooking breakfast, with Alexa helping.This is the backpacking oven. We also had cinammon rolls for breakfast.
On another walk around the island, we saw this decaying tree trunk. You can really see that the part of the branch that goes inside the tree doesn't rot as fast as the rest of trunk.More beautiful madrona trees.
A weird twisted tree. Lots of trees were downed in the area, apparently there had been a heavy windstorm in 1991.
These holes are caused by woodpeckers. We heard them early in the morning.The dock on the north shore of Jones Island.
Sunday we paddled along Shaw island mostly. There were some beautiful houses along the shore.A fancy spiral staircase leading to a mini-beach.
This cabin had totem poles built into it. Apparently there was some kind of indian preserve there.A racoon, hunting for mussels or crabs, perhaps.
A teepee and tent
These lucky people had their own seaplane--they could probably get here from Seattle in about half an hour. We speculated that the device on the wing was to scare away seagulls.Alexa and Hal
A very strange-looking bent tree.A many-legged starfish.
Roasting marshmallows in the campfire.
Monday morning dawned fairly sunny and bright. Eric was very grumpy though because he hadn't slept well. He's faking the smile in this picture.The whole gang, minus our other guide Ryan. From left to right, Mat, Erica, Alexa, Rachael, Sylvia, Eric, Felix, Hal, and Christian lying down.
Back on San Juan, and packing for the homeward journey. This is our other guide Ryan.