I had such a busy weekend this past weekend, like seriously wall to wall activity, that I haven't even yet had the chance to tag or caption any of the photos -- but, I have them uploaded, at least! And I have 73 shots from Saturday on San Juan Island, and another 26 from Easter Sunday, yesterday in Olympia. I did already otherwise share a brief post about Easter last night. But right now I need to go back a day and tell you about San Juan Island.

First, a short history. The initial plan to visit San Juan Island was intended to be via the San Juan Island Clipper, which is a passenger speed-ferry you can take direct from downtown Seattle. It also would have cost use $99 a person and we would have been stuck on the island for five hours without a car, which would have meant seeing little more of the island than the population 2,000 town of Friday Harbor. Now, they do have these awesome little "Scoot Coupes" you can rent (in addition to mopeds or bicycles), and I was jealous of every one I saw on the road, although I see now that a day rental is $160 (!), with a top speed of only 30 mph. This basically means that even with that option theoretically there, we would have been stuck in the town of Friday Harbor all day, having paid well over three times the price to get there.

And it was really only circumstance that altered this plan, as my initial plan was to take the Clipper on Saturday two weeks from now, on the Saturday ending my Birth Week. But, Shobhit and I already have Birth Week plans the day before that; Shobhit got a new job that has him working on Saturday the 27th; and, as it happens, the Clipper to San Juan Island only starts for the season on the 26th.

Shobhit had suggested we take our day trip on Saturday this past weekend instead, on a day we had initially planned to take our day trip to the Tulip Festival -- which we moved to Saturday 4/13 to accommodate this change. Even at that point I was looking to take the Clipper on 4/20, and only discovered I couldn't when I looked up ticketing while we were driving to the Tulip Festival. So, we improvised -- and settled on the new plan of driving to the Washington State Ferries dock in Anacortes (a 90-minute drive) and then catching the ferry to San Juan Island from there.

The schedule and variable pricing for different routes and times on the Washington State Ferries is not the most intuitive or user-friendly thing, so it turned out I underestimated the cost of a vehicle, driver and passenger on the San Juan Island ferry from Anacortes -- I had thought it would be closer to $53; it actually came to roughly $65 when we reached the ferry terminal right at about 8:30 a.m. That’s still a hell of a lot better price than nearly $200 for the two of us to take a Clipper ferry, though. And if you add the semi-unexpected cost of $45 for one nigh in an AirBnB in Bellingham on April 28, as far as what I initially planned for Birth Week costs, that's still only $110 rather than $200. So, I'm still coming out well ahead. Besides, aside from the one $3.53 order of tater tots I paid for on the ferry, I did not spend anything else that entire day -- Shobhit spent way more, as he kept buying bottles of wine.

Anyway! Also at the Washington State Ferries website recommendation, which strongly encourages you to get in line at the ferry terminal for San Juan Islands 45-60 minutes early, we arrived at 8:30 am for our 9:30 ferry reservation, having left Seattle right at 7 a.m. And then? They just put us on the 8:30 ferry! The 9:30 was all booked up even the night before, so they maybe went ahead and put the early birds on the previous ferry to make room on the later one.

So really, every change that had to be made about our plans for this day trip worked in our favor. This earlier ferry, which just happened to be running fifteen minutes late or else we may not have gotten on it, was just as well, as it gave us an extra hour on the island. We grabbed a couple of San Juan Island brochures from one of the displays on the ferry, and once we drove onto San Juan Island, we used the one map with thirteen points of interest marked on it in a loop drive around it, and we followed that map to every stop in order, except that we saved Friday Harbor itself as our last stop. This was also a smart move, as it allowed us to park in line for the ferry back so early that we were only the fourth vehicle to get on it.

We made two specific spots in Friday Harbor itself, which essentially means our day trip ran us through fourteen points of interest, over the course of about five and a half hours. Now, you also have to subtract the total of ninety-four minutes of driving time on roads between these places, and that takes the five and a half hours down to, let's make it a rough estimate of four hours we could spend at any of these places. Divide that by fourteen, and you get an average of 17.14 minutes at each stop.

Now. Our second stop was "American Camp," with a visitor center and lots of trails along rocky cliff coastline on the southern end of the island -- Shobhit is seen there in the above photo. We kind of took our time there, until we realized how pressed for time we would be to see every other stop on the map before making it back to Friday Harbor at least an hour before our 4:15 ferry was scheduled to leave. We wanted ample time there, as well as at the San Juan Vineyard that was the last stop before that. So, for pretty much every other stop, we often would barely get out of the car and look around. In a couple of instances we go out for like five minutes, looked around, and then were like, "Okay!" -- and we moved on. At the alpaca farm, Shobhit didn't even get out of the car, and I only got out long enough to take a few quick shots of the alpacas.

Normally I would be really irritated by being rushed like that, but it's different when you make a mutual decision like that. And, I knew Shobhit wanted extra time at the vineyard, so between American Camp and San Juan Vineyard -- nine stops -- we really hustled, as it was either that or choose some stops to skip. And I was too OCD and wanted to get at least a few photos at every stop numbered on the map. And I did! And, I had lots of fun doing it, honestly.

I really needed to pee by the time we reached the Vineyard, as we had even ditched the idea of eating our picnic lunch we packed at one of our stops. We saved time by taking turns driving while the other ate his packed lunch in the passenger seat while we kept moving on the road -- another decision that saved us a good amount of time. A lady at San Juan Island Vineyard asked if we planned on buying anything at the store before she would give us the key code for their bathrooms, which I resented a little -- most people stopping there are going to spend money; they don't need to hold our bladders hostage for a ransom of tourist dollars. That said, the two other ladies working the bar inside the main building were very cool as Shobhit and I did our wine tasting, and then he bought a couple bottles of wine. He bought even more at the wine shop we stopped at next in Friday Harbor right next to the ferry terminal, so once we got it all home, we had one more bottle than we even had room for in our wine rack in the kitchen. That was quickly remedied by taking two bottles of wine to Olympia for Easter yesterday, though.

We went and had an early dinner at a nearby local Mexican restaurant, which we took as takeout and then share a delicious cheese quesadilla after we boarded the 4:15 ferry and were on our way across the water again. This particular ferry had one stop along the way (the one in the morning had been direct), at Lopez Island, so we got back to Anacortes at 5:40. We drove half an hour to the nearest Costco to get some gas, and then drove the rest of the way down to Seattle.

I hope to get all the photos captioned with a lot more detail about the trip over the next day or so, so check back again for that on Flickr if you're so inclined.

[posted 12:39 pm]