Whidbey Island area, WA (09-05-14)

I’ve been suffering from blogatosis, or blogitis, whichever you prefer.  After a summer of constant blogging and updating, its hard for me to find the energy to blog right now. My blogging friends know that more goes into a blog post than just a “stream of consciousness”, although that’s what I try to make it seem like it is.

In Alaska and Canada I had to rely on my memory when writing my blog!! Usually when I am posting about something like the Klondike gold rush, I will Google it to refresh my memory, but that mostly wasn’t possible for the last 3 months. So yeah, I’m exhausted, lol!


Anyway, enough whining.  Here’s a synopsis of what we’ve been up to since we landed in Washington:

We met up with our friend Joe and his girlfriend Sharon.  Joe has a water/electric site outside his garage so after stuffing ourselves with Mexican food, we spent the night at his place.  We met up with them a day or so later for lunch in Port Townsend as well.  Try as we might, we couldn’t convince them to come to AZ this January.

The small town of Oak Harbor has a Military Appreciation Day, with free food for everyone!  We enjoyed the free ice cream immensely!

The following day the town park hosted an Antique Motor Car Club so we watched all the old cars being driven around the park.

Hiking: we’ve hiked several trails, including this hike in Deception Pass State Park, where views of Mt. Baker were prevalent.

Some of our “hikes” have been along the beach.  These are the hikes that have made us decide that we can not do this area justice in a few weeks, we we need to come back for a summer.  Being boaters, we love the water-especially the ocean, and this area has some spectacular ocean!

We both enjoy searching for, and collecting, sea glass.  A guy we met told us about a beach that has an abundance sea glass. Although our definition of “abundance” differs, we collected enough to keep us happy! (this isn’t all of it )

Finally.  While we were in Alaska, we went on several whale watches, but never got a good look at killer whales.  I had heard that northwest Washington was a good place to take a whale watch looking for Orcas (which are not actually whales at all, but the largest member of the dolphin family).






We signed up for a local whale watch and had an awesome day watching killer whales!




 

 

2nd Love revisited (06-18-11)

   When we sold our house 2 years ago, we also sold our 39’ Sea Ray, 2nd Love. We sold it to Joe and Judi, a couple who live outside of Rochester NY.  We have stayed in contact with them and have actually met up with them to go hiking.  We all have similar interests and conversation never seems to lag.  On this trip through New York, we were close enough to visit them and they invited us to go out on the boat for the day on Saturday.  Well, they didn’t have to ask us twice!  We got up early Saturday and drove to their Marina, which is essentially on Lake Ontario.  As a bonus for me, Ontario is the only Great Lake I haven’t seen yet, so I have officially seen them all now.


Officers saluting as we go by

     Saturday was an action packed day, since it was the “annual inspection” day.  A parade of boats from the yacht club snaked past the Officers of the club, who were standing at attention on a sail boat, all decked out in officer garb.  After the parade, each vessel was boarded and “inspected” by the Officers, to see which ones were decorated the best.  Really it was more a question of who bribed them with the best food and liquor.




  Lunch was served by the Yacht Club after the contest.  After grabbing a quick bite, we left the dock again and took 2nd Love out onto Lake Ontario for a ride.

Joe seemed to enjoy having a chauffer for a change of pace and left most of the driving to Paul. Meantime, Judi and I just relaxed in the cockpit, enjoying the picture perfect day.

After our ride we anchored outside the harbor and several other boats came along and tied up with us, and the afternoon was spent partying.  A typical boating day!  We headed back in once it started getting dark, and just made it to the Yacht Club restaurant in time for dinner before they closed up for the evening. A very full, and very fun day!