We arrived in Anacortes on Tuesday afternoon, October 4. We are not quite on the West Coast, but very close.
We drove through the Cascade Mountains on Highway 2, choosing to travel north of I-90 into Seattle. Lee decided he didn't want to drive through Seattle traffic, which was a fine decision. We reached the small town of Leavenworth at lunch time. Leavenworth is a town of Bavarian style, with an ornate and colorful architecture. The downtown area is full of small shops and loads of flowers, so is ever so charming. Unfortunately I didn't get photos, but here is the local pizza joint. I suspect that all buildings on the main road are required, in the ordinance code, to follow certain "Bavarian" standards. I am putting this town on my list of places to return to at a future time. (My list of such places is getting very long.)
Leavenworth seems to be a gateway of sorts to the Cascades, if one is entering the Cascades from the east. During the winter, there is downhill and cross-country skiing nearby. Elevation is 1180 feet. I love the clouds resting on the hilltops in the photo below:
As we drove along, we saw lots of color. Most of the trees are evergreens, but the understory shrubs are deciduous and they add just the right "pop" of color:
We saw a few craggy peaks (the spots are dirt on the windshield):
21 1/2 years ago, Lee and I spent our honeymoon in Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island in the Puget Sound. We returned to Friday Harbor on Thursday, via ferry. We walked on, choosing not to take our car.
The San Juan Islands are really beautiful. There are 172 of them, some very small, many of them inhabited:
We neared Friday Harbor:
And pulled into the dock:
We even walked by the motel where we stayed 21 years ago! It was still there, amazingly.
As with all the other places we have visited on this trip, Friday Harbor has changed greatly. There are far more buildings, homes, and stores. In 1988, there were empty lots in town. No longer. But it is still a beautiful place. We had lunch in a restaurant over the harbor, very romantic! It has been fun to revisit. We even visited the whale museum again, to find out how much the local orca pods have changed. Their numbers have grown just slightly, but they have been placed on the endangered list due to pollution, noise, and fewer salmon in the Sound.
As with all things, this good time had to come to an end. We caught the ferry to return to Anacortes, and watched another ferry pull in as we left.
We are staying in an RV park on Padilla Bay. Across the bay is a petroleum processing plant. It is hard to find beauty in a petroleum processing plant, but after arriving back at the park from our trip to Friday Harbor, the evening sun lit up the smoke stacks of the plant like candles, and it was, surprisingly, beautiful.
Despite the presence of the petroleum plant, there are a lot of birds here. I have seen several Great Blue Herons, a few dozen common loons, a belted kingfisher, and a family of mallards. And of course, sea gulls, dropping shells on the rocks in front of our motor home to break them open. Oh, and crows. The crows like to walk on the roof of our motor home in the morning, making lots of not-so-gentle pitter patter noises! Lee does not appreciate it. He fears their poop, since he is well-aware of the acidic and destructive properties of bird poop.
Now, I hope you don't mind, but I have one more story to tell. Today we drove to Bellingham, north of Anacortes, to visit the Heritage Flight Museum. It is a small museum, founded by William Anders, one of the three astronauts that circled the moon on Apollo 8 in 1968. The museum includes several planes, half a dozen maybe, all in good flying condition. The pilots, who happen to be sons of Bill Anders, fly the planes in air shows. Here is one of the airplanes, a T-6 Texan, flown originally in WWII.
Here is the fun part. While we were in the museum, two of Anders' sons, Greg and Allen, walked in and flew off in a P-51! Very exciting.
Great fun!
