Juddmansee.com

Phew! So much has happened in the last few days and I’ve finally managed to have time to write about it. Also, we had enough free time to run to Office Max to get a USB flash card reader so we can download our photos to the laptop.

On Monday after the last blog posting we drove to North Cascades National Park for a very short afternoon/evening of poking around. We took a couple short hikes from the visitor’s center and took a few nice pictures along the way. This shot is a view of Picket Ridge.

After leaving Picket Ridge we headed up the Skagit River to the dam and saw a nice little flower garden and a pretty spectacular series of waterfalls.

We drove back to town and managed to grab dinner before the sidewalks rolled up at 9pm.

On Tuesday we had meetings in the morning and afternoon. After our last meeting we drove out to Fidalgo Island which is home to the town of Anacortes. Susan’s grandparents spoke fondly of their trip out west for their 50th wedding anniversary in 1987 and how beautiful the Anacortes area was. We drove out to Washington Park on the west side of the island with views of the San Juan Islands and the surrounding water. Next we drove up Mt. Erie which had great views of Mt. Baker and of Mt. Rainier far to the south. The first picture is Mt. Baker and the second is a view over the islands to the south. Though our eyes could just barely make out Mt. Rainier the camera did not pick it up.

On Wednesday we had meetings until 2pm and headed back to Anacortes to go on a whale watching tour. We had no idea what to expect from the trip and ended up having (according to the boat crew) a very lucky viewing experience. Just that morning they had to travel 2 hours to Canada to watch the whales for 1 hour before driving 2 hours back to port. On our trip we saw our first whale about 30 minutes out of port and watched for 3 hours. My camera can’t do justice to how neat it was to see the backs of orcas surfacing between 20 and 1000 yards from the boat with the occasional breeching and subsequent splash.

Orcas live in matriarchal groups of pods. The pods are designated by letters and the whales by a number. We saw mostly J Pod whales with an L pod whale thrown in. The first picture is of J-5 who is a 70 something year old female. She surfaced within 20 yards of the boat and I managed to snap a picture of her with Mt. Baker in the background. The second picture is of Mike (forget his number) who we saw most often. The third picture is of me just missing a full breech by a whale. The splash is still impressive. Though I couldn’t get a decent picture since they were mostly 200 yards away, we spent a lot of time watching Slick and her newborn (J-42) swimming and surfacing together to breathe before diving back under the water.

After the whales decided to head off in a different direction in search of salmon the boat did a little tour of other sites in the area. We saw harbor seals sunning on the rocks, bald eagles hunting for fish, and even a peregrine falcon circling his aerie. The boat also drove us to Deception Pass with its famous bridge before heading back to port.

Today is a much slower paced day as we’ve taken time to do some things around La Conner itself. We did some souvenir shopping, toured the quilt museum, and saw the resident turkeys in town. The turkeys apparently moved into town several years ago and decided to stay. The locals at first thought about having them removed (mmmmm with stuffing) but decided to adopt them instead. We found them in someone’s driveway right where the receptionist said they’d be.

The final shot is one for Susan’s family. The Skagit Valley is very fertile farmland with a great growing climate. There are so many tasty fresh greens, berries, and other local goodies that we’ve eaten very well (and healthy) while being here. Below you’ll see a picture of Susan with her favorite (haha) vegetable.

Tomorrow it’s on to Mt. St. Helens and to visit Corinne and Mike!