Free Willy!

Cue the Michael Jackson music, bring in the orcas, roll tape. That is how I felt last weekend on our day trip to the San Juan Islands. We left early Saturday morning to make the hour and a half drive to the ferry that would take us to Friday Harbor at San Juan Island. When we parked the car and got out, we were freezing! After purchasing warmer jackets, we loaded onto the enormous ferry, (it hold cars too,) that would take us to Friday Harbor.

The San Juan Islands are made up of several islands, and we went to the main one. San Juan Island is a small island, (well huge if your reference point is Dog Island). It is about 45 miles around and the only way to get there is by plane or ferry. It is a rich little island with tourism, real estate, and some farming being the main economy. In the surrounding waters, there are 3 orca pods. Actually one of the orcas in free willy belongs to one of the pods and I think Willy himself came from around these waters.

After wandering around the local Whale Museum, we got some lunch to go at a local deli and got on a shuttle that took us to Lime Kiln Park. It is a cute place, with a lighthouse and nice trails and points to watch the whales from. You can really see them from most of the shore line on the island, but this seems to be the best place. After almost and hour and half, the whales finally showed up! We were so excited! They were so fun to watch, one in particular kept flapping his tail around and made quite a show! They are so big too! Some of the adult males have a dorsal fin over 6 feet! Crazy! After they started swimming away, we caught the shuttle back to the airport.

It is actually a pretty busy airport, but there is no terminal and all the planes are pretty small. We had an appointment with a pilot that was going to take us on a sightseeing tour. He was so nice and had been flying forever. Dan has never been in such a small plane and I think he was a little nervous! The flight went really smooth, and I think once we got off the ground, Dan calmed down a bit. We first went to find some orcas. We were able to find them in no time and the view was awesome! You can see down into the water 50-100 ft, so we could see them from above great, even when the boats could not! It was such a neat way to observe them, they were so pretty! After watching the orcas for a while, we took a ride around the islands and headed up to Canada to take a look around there, of course, it all looked the same! After about an hour, we headed back to the airport. The landing was very smooth and we were glad to be back on the ground! More than anything, I think it made us realize that if we are going to keep seeing all these great things, we are going to have to get a better camera with a zoom!

The next day, we headed to Seattle via the bus. We went to the historic Pioneer Square to see what was going on. There are lots of cute little shops to see and we wandered around for awhile. Then, we went on a guided tour through "Underground Seattle." It was so neat to learn about Seattle's history. It was basically built in chaos. It is hard to explain and understand, but the town burned down in a fire, as most old towns did. To rebuild, however, the people and the government had two different ideas. They began rebuilding at once, but with these different plans. The people rebuilt the buildings immediately and the government took time "regrading" the land, (making the slope less steep). The streets were built up, 3 stories in some places, while the buildings remained on the same level. After the streets were complete and new sidewalks were made, much of the town was, in fact, underground! The tour took us to some of the parts of the underground that are no longer in use. The Underground facilitated a lot of illegal activities and was eventually condemned. A neat thing that we learned was that the term "skid row" came from this area. It originated from when the loggers would "skid" the logs down the "road" to the coast line. This area was also filled with questionable activity, such as drinking and prostitution. Now, most towns use this term to identify there rough parts of town. It all came from this lovely chaotic town!

After our tour, we went to the SeaFair parade. It is a parade in Seattle that celebrates the coming of summer and to celebrate the ocean and its activities. We had a great time watching the parade and watching the people! It was a little different from the parades in Tallahassee because it was longer and there were tons of people everywhere!

Not much else has been going on this week. We did go to breakfast Wednesday morning at this little place called the Brown Bag Cafe. I had the most amazing thing! It was french toast, but instead of toast, it was an enormous cinnamon roll! My new favorite breakfast! I can't believe I have lived all this time without it!