Whale Watching

Friday we took the Ferry to another island - this one actually named San Juan to take our whale watching excursion we had booked on line  out of Friday Harbor with Captain Carli.  We had chosen him because of his advertising as being a smaller boat - only 6 passengers rather that a huge boat with 75 people all crowding up on the decks trying to get room to take a picture.

The weather was actually worse on Friday that it had been the previous days. Very overcast from the start and cool about 60 degrees.  We got to San Juan Island and drove out to the National Park site where the English had camped for 12 years (1860-1872) on the north west corner of the island closest to Vancouver island.  During this same time the Americans camped out on the southern section of the island while they were trying to decide who really owned the islands. 

When the treaty was signed it said the border between Canada & America was on the 49th parallel lattitude and extending along the straight around the tip of Vancouver Island to belong to Canada.  The problem with that was there were two straights - one on east side and one on the west side and depending on which one you defined as "the straight" it made the difference of whether the group of islands known as the San Juans were part of the United States or Canada.  There was no fighting just the joint occupation and then towards the end they let Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany be the arbitatior and he decided the islands should belong to the U.S. With this decision the English just packed up and moved back to Vancouver island. Enough of a history lesson for now!


By the time we were done at the historical site it was raining hard and did not stop the rest of the day or night.  We traveled down the west side of the island and viewed what would have been beautiful west facing beaches if the clouds were not hanging so low you could barely see the water.  We stopped at a Lavendar Farm and saw all of the products they made out of the distilled oil - even cooking vinegar and oil & lavendar flavored chocolate as well as dog biscuits and all the normal lotions and potions.  It was just too much tranquility and calmness for me!


We went on to Friday Harbor not sure if the whale watch boat would go out with the weather the way it was but just like Southeast Alaksa rain does not stop anything.  We went out with Captain Carli on a not so great looking boat with a young couple of college students whe were studying in NewYork but were from mainland China.  

Captain Carli was quite a speciman of crustiness but with the help of his buddies on the radio put us right in a group of 4 or 5 transient Orca whales. The transients are like batchelor lions who just kind of wander around trying to join a larger group of Orcas called residents who seem to stay in certain spots more regularly.  We followed them back and forth off the beach for over an hour.

They did not put on much of a show but Steve did get one picture of one of them up out of the water.  All in all it was fun just being out there watching them in their own world.

There were about 4 or 5 other boats at first -all the big boats with people elbow to elbow all along the railings trying to see but they all left not long after we got there so we had the whales for quite a while to ourselves.

We went back to the harbor and had planned to wander around the tourist shops and doddle around until the ferry returned us to Orcas Island and our camp site at  10 pm.  But lo and behold the shops mostly closed at 6 pm or a couple of them at 7 pm so we had sea food on the warf and then just waited in the truck reading our books in the rain for 3 hours until the ferry came.