Orcas Island, WA

Orcas Island is part of the San Juan Island chain in the northwest part of Washington state. We took a ferry there from Anacortes and got in around around 11am. The ferry trip was cool, as car ferries generally are. There’s just something in your mind that screams ‘Don’t drive into the water’ as you pull onto a boat. But we wandered topside and enjoyed the trip. They had a hot chocolate vending machine, which is something of a weird fettish of mine. Vending machine hot chocolate became my staple at my first job, and many jobs thereafter, and the engineering lounge at RPI when I was in college. Anyway..

Orcas Island is lovely. We drove up to ‘East Sound’ and walked around for a while. Found another book shop and bought the ‘Car Talk Puzzlers’ flash cards, which we will be going through for the rest of the trip. From there we drove up to the top of Mt. Constitution, the tallest point on the island. From there you can see both Vancouver Island and the several mountains of Washington, as well as all the San Juan islands.

We then went over to West Sound where we found our hotel. Turns out we were the only people staying in the multi-room lodge (which was cheaper) instead of their cottages, so we got the whole big cottage to ourselves. They had scrabble. Much merriment (and trash talking, and word inventions, occurred. I still think ‘yale’ is a type of lock and not a proper noun. But that’s ok.) Had dinner at the inn’s restaurant, which was quite good.

Tomorrow we have to catch an early morning ferry to Sydney Harbour on Vancouver Island.