Friday Harbor

Yesterday I took advantage of our only good, actually feels like summer weekend, to get out and about.  My roommate Beth, her sister Debbie, and I went to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island for the day.  If you can believe, I've been in this area for three years now without managing to go there.  Who knows why!

We drove out to Anacortes and since we were super early for the ferry browsed in the cute shops downtown.  There is an awesome shop, The Mercantile, which sells items from estate sales.  If I lived in a bigger place I would have bought all kinds of stuff because they had some awesome, very cheaply priced furniture that I loved include several chests, a couch, cool lamps, etc.

We then ran to the ferry and hopped on it for the hour ferry ride to Friday Harbor.  It was quite windy as you can see from the fact that my hair is standing straight out in these pictures!

We had some great views of Mt. Baker in the distance.

And here we are coming up to Friday Harbor.  We saw a bald eagle soaring around a smaller island when we arrived but unfortunately I didn't have my camera out.  It was quite beautiful and we actually saw quite a few of them around.  

We ate lunch a cute little Mediterranean restaurant and had the best view.  The photo below I took while sitting at our table.  

Beth and me with the marina in the background.  

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the cute shops in Friday Harbor and sitting back and relaxing on the waterfront.  If I'd had my druthers we would have driven onto the ferry and gone hiking and exploring on the rest of the island, but there's something to be said for taking it easy sometimes.  

Lastly, some photos from the return ferry trip....

 

 Next trip to the San Jauns--a camping trip to Orcas Island!  (First I have to con someone into doing this with me though....)

Summer Vacation Continued...

DAY SIX: (Which wins the prize for my absolute favorite day on this vacation!!)

We did another long hike on this day.  It was supposed to be a 12 mile round trip hike. I think we managed to do about 5 miles and then had to turn around because the snow completely obscured the trail, so we did about 10 of the 12 total miles.  This was a hike to Grinnell Glacier which we never managed to find because of all that snow.

Here is Lake Josephine.  It's pure glacial and snow melt so even though I kept looking at it longingly as it was 80 degrees outside and I was very hot, I wasn't hot enough to try to jump in the water!!

There were waterfalls running down the mountain everywhere since all of the snow in the park is melting.  We probably crossed one every few hundred yards there were so many of them!

Here is Grinnell Lake, which we didn't actually hike to as we were trying to get to the glacier.  

Below is where the hike really started to get interesting.  We reached a point where there was a chain across the trail with a sign warning us of snow hazards and snow blocking the trail.  We came across a family who said their kids had managed to crawl under the snow on the trail right here so we crawled under it too!  I got pretty muddy since Antje was reluctant to go under and I carried our packs through.  It was very muddy and dripping snow under there but not too bad.  Yes, believe it or not we went UNDER that.  We would have gone around it but there was a very narrow spot that looked like we would fall right off the mountain and I wasn't brave enough for that.

Here I am on the other side of the snow I crawled under:

Right around the corner we stopped for lunch and found a bighorn sheep who was showing off for us for a long time.  He was quite photogenic!  He was still there when we came back down a couple hours later too.

Then we came to a point where we had to cross snowfields without actually knowing where the trail was.  Antje was pretty nervous about crossing this too but I reasoned that obviously there were enough other people who had done this as evidenced by the number of footprints in the snow.  So we continued on.

We didn't make it much farther than the spot below.  Unfortunately, if we had wanted to actually go past this point we would have had to have some major ice equipment as to go any farther you would have either fallen off the mountain or fallen through the snow pack.  It was a ton of fun if not the brightest thing we've ever done!  (It was totally me also, as if left to herself Antje would have turned back at the first sign I think.)

And we saw an osprey and its nest on the way back to our campsite at the end of the day...Or at least Antje told me it's an osprey and in my ignorance about kinds of birds I choose to believe her.  

All in all this was a great day!! We had the most fabulous views of mountains, lakes, waterfalls, and tons of snow even if we never did find the glacier.  There were enough people that I wasn't really nervous about coming across a bear but not so many people that you felt the trail was too busy.  Awesome!!!!  I highly recommend this trail.

Summer Vacation Continued...

DAY FIVE: (In which the highlight of the day was seeing the world's largest purple spoon! Although I forgot to take a picture of it.)

Because Antje was moaning dreadfully after doing a long hike the day before we took it easy on the Fourth of July.  We wandered around to a few sights, took a boat ride on a lake, and then wandered down to the Goat Lick at the south end of Glacier to see all the mountain goats.

We started out the day around the Two Medicine area of the park.  Here we are at Running Eagle Falls:

We then took a boat ride around Two Medicine Lake which was very nice.  Somehow I didn't end up taking any pictures....We then moved on to the Goat Lick, which apparently got its name because the side of the mountain that the goats like to hang out on is full of minerals that they'll go lick off the rock.  I took about a billion pictures of them, some super close up and some really far away....

And of course we got to see some fireworks while driving back to our campsite.  No Fourth of July is complete without the fireworks!!

Summer Vacation Continued...

DAY FOUR: (Which was awesome and totally redeemed Waterton!)

Antje and I went on an 8.6 mile hike (plus some extra walking to and from the car and around the lake) on this day.  The hike started at a trail head in Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada and traversed into Glacier National Park in Montana.  The crazy part about it: because the U.S. is so paranoid about people entering the country you have to have your passport with you and go through customs once you hit the Goat Haunt ranger station in Montana, just for your day hike!  It upped the cool factor considerably.  How often do you go through customs while hiking?

This is a picture at the start of the hike.  The day started out kinda foggy and a little rainy...

And here is the international boundary.  We learned that the entire border is marked because it's supposed to be easily identifiable.  The line of bright green trees in the middle is the boundary between the U.S. and Canada.  They apparently cut down all the trees in the middle every so often.  We found this out by asking the customs guy at the ranger station.

Antje and me standing with one foot in the U.S. and one foot in Canada.  I, of course, look much less like a dweeb in my picture!!

And because the U.S. doesn't really like anyone entering the country here is the first thing you see even while in the middle of a hike in the middle of nowhere:

Along with the requisite bear signs (which for some reason Canada doesn't really have although I think there just as many bears around).

Bear scratchings on the tree.  We saw plenty of bear scat too.

We also passed through a bald eagle nesting area and actually found the nest!  On the ferry ride back to Canada we also saw the bald eagle but I didn't manage to get a picture of it.

For the record, this bridge was not fun.  It was one of those swaying suspension bridges that Antje said reminded her of Indiana Jones.  It pretty much felt like it too!  Only one person was allowed on at a time and it rocked and swayed a lot.  I tried to go on it quickly but that just made it rock more.  I have definitely come a long way in my fear of heights.  A few years ago I never would have set foot on this sucker!

Me and Antje at Upper Waterton Lake at the Goat Haunt Ranger Station.

And to end an awesome day we saw a black bear and her two cubs while we were driving out of the park!  These are the best pictures I managed to get of them.