This is a bit later than I expected my update to be, a combination of long and tiring days, and the fact that despite staying in the home of a senior Microsoft executive, we did not have access to wi-fi over the weekend in Seattle.
The first part of our second week in Friday Harbor was uneventful. Both ADC and I worked hard so that - Woohoo! I finished uploading edited versions of the nine articles I had to read while at FHL, and send a summary of my comments to my co-editors. That was a marathon ten days, during which I edited another article (I'll be paid for that one, though), but now I'm done! ADC also finished writing his article, up to and including figure legends an acknowledgements, so on last Thursday our holiday really started.
Not that this hasn't been a partial holiday, anyway, of course. Last Saturday we took the bus to Limekiln Park, aka Whale Watch Park, where we had a very enjoyable time hiking. We almost missed seeing orcas, as they were not in the vicinity most of the time, and in fact we only saw a few in the distance just before we had to leave the lighthouse viewing spot in order to catch the last bus. ADC was rather disappointed, as the potential was much greater than the actuality turned out, but the rest of us were thrilled anyway. We also saw a golden eagle while we were hiking, which was almost as impressive.
We followed up the whale theme by going to the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor on Tuesday. It was almost as much of a trek to get there as it was to the park, on the other side of the island, because we made the bad mistake of ordering sandwiches to go from a coffee shop, rather than the deli, in town. I've never had to wait 50 minutes for sandwiches before, and not been offered any kind of recompense or apology, not even a glass of water while we waited. The staff was overwhelmed by the lunch crowd (which struck us as being probably normal for the height of tourist season), and the single woman making the sandwiches was clearly not a professional: not only did she mix up orders (part of the reason for the delay), but she was incredibly slow and inefficient. I think that even S, who spends part of his time on another planet, could have worked faster. Adding insult to injury, when we mentioned how long we had been waiting to the staff, one of the women said "We're not a restaurant" - well, if you can't cope with a "to go" option, why offer it? And in the end, neither the sandwiches nor the cookies we bought were very good.
The Whale Museum was not what I expected. It was smaller than I thought it would be, a bit over-didactic and had almost nothing on the relations between humans and whales throughout history. I was expecting a museum with much more about whaling, but apparently that was never a major industry here, only further north, in Canada and Alaska. The in-depth studies and genealogical charts of the pods of the southern resident orcas were interesting, though, even though I felt that the anthropomorphism was a bit much: yes, whales are clearly intelligent, but they are not human.
After the museum, ADC went back to work, while the boys and I wandered around window shopping. We went into a place called Island Studios, selling arts and crafts made by locals. I was shocked to see ruffle scarves, the kind that I matched the hand-dyed wool to the previous week and whose yarn costs about $6 per ball, for sale for over $40!!
The boys have taken up geocaching with a vengeance: on Wednesday they spent all afternoon wandering round town by themselves, looking for caches. They had a false start, as after they got to town A discovered his batteries had run out. When they arrived home, S discovered that his hat (which he had been wearing) was missing. He borrowed A's spare and they set off again, and found two caches and S's hat (it was next to the hutch where you could buy eggs on the honour system). Lucky boy! On Wednesday night, once it became fully dark we went down to the docks. ADC and the boys went rowing, in the hopes of seeing bioluminescence, while I stayed on the docks and joined a group of students who were "night lighting": sending down an electric light into the water to see what might be attracted. I think that we were very lucky: a huge nereus worm swam around and around, there was a salmon migration and one swam into the net held by one of the students - I don't know who was more surprised, him or the salmon, and best of all, a harbor seal swam by really close: you could count each of his whiskers!
Not that this hasn't been a partial holiday, anyway, of course. Last Saturday we took the bus to Limekiln Park, aka Whale Watch Park, where we had a very enjoyable time hiking. We almost missed seeing orcas, as they were not in the vicinity most of the time, and in fact we only saw a few in the distance just before we had to leave the lighthouse viewing spot in order to catch the last bus. ADC was rather disappointed, as the potential was much greater than the actuality turned out, but the rest of us were thrilled anyway. We also saw a golden eagle while we were hiking, which was almost as impressive.
We followed up the whale theme by going to the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor on Tuesday. It was almost as much of a trek to get there as it was to the park, on the other side of the island, because we made the bad mistake of ordering sandwiches to go from a coffee shop, rather than the deli, in town. I've never had to wait 50 minutes for sandwiches before, and not been offered any kind of recompense or apology, not even a glass of water while we waited. The staff was overwhelmed by the lunch crowd (which struck us as being probably normal for the height of tourist season), and the single woman making the sandwiches was clearly not a professional: not only did she mix up orders (part of the reason for the delay), but she was incredibly slow and inefficient. I think that even S, who spends part of his time on another planet, could have worked faster. Adding insult to injury, when we mentioned how long we had been waiting to the staff, one of the women said "We're not a restaurant" - well, if you can't cope with a "to go" option, why offer it? And in the end, neither the sandwiches nor the cookies we bought were very good.
The Whale Museum was not what I expected. It was smaller than I thought it would be, a bit over-didactic and had almost nothing on the relations between humans and whales throughout history. I was expecting a museum with much more about whaling, but apparently that was never a major industry here, only further north, in Canada and Alaska. The in-depth studies and genealogical charts of the pods of the southern resident orcas were interesting, though, even though I felt that the anthropomorphism was a bit much: yes, whales are clearly intelligent, but they are not human.
After the museum, ADC went back to work, while the boys and I wandered around window shopping. We went into a place called Island Studios, selling arts and crafts made by locals. I was shocked to see ruffle scarves, the kind that I matched the hand-dyed wool to the previous week and whose yarn costs about $6 per ball, for sale for over $40!!
The boys have taken up geocaching with a vengeance: on Wednesday they spent all afternoon wandering round town by themselves, looking for caches. They had a false start, as after they got to town A discovered his batteries had run out. When they arrived home, S discovered that his hat (which he had been wearing) was missing. He borrowed A's spare and they set off again, and found two caches and S's hat (it was next to the hutch where you could buy eggs on the honour system). Lucky boy! On Wednesday night, once it became fully dark we went down to the docks. ADC and the boys went rowing, in the hopes of seeing bioluminescence, while I stayed on the docks and joined a group of students who were "night lighting": sending down an electric light into the water to see what might be attracted. I think that we were very lucky: a huge nereus worm swam around and around, there was a salmon migration and one swam into the net held by one of the students - I don't know who was more surprised, him or the salmon, and best of all, a harbor seal swam by really close: you could count each of his whiskers!
Our last full day on San Juan Island was spent at the north end, thanks to a kind neighbour who lent us her car. We started at English Camp, where the British garrison lived during the joint Anglo-American occupation of the island from 1849-1871 until the Kaiser's arbitration awarded the San Juan Island s to the United States rather than to Canada, then walked up Young Hill for a fantastic view of Haro Strait across to British Columbia, and finally visited the resort of Roche Harbor, clearly where you go if you have a yacht. We found three geocaches, which pleased A greatly.
We left Friday Harbor in the rain, similar to what we had woken up to on our first morning there. The trip back to the mainland was uneventful, although this time we knew to choose seats around a table with a jigsaw puzzle. I knitted and occasionally helped the others, and we completed the puzzle as the ferry drew in to port at Anacortes. Once we debarked, we quickly found the rental car agent, who took us in a pick-up truck into the actual town of Anacortes ("salmon canning capital of the world"), where we spent much longer than anticipated actually getting the rental car. Part of that was despite ADC having called to confirm, they didn't have a full-sized sedan that could take five suitcases, so we had to take a midi-SUV, which needed its oil changed before being driven to California. We went to have lunch - which was very nice - but took about twice as long as we thought it would. Clearly the Pacific North West lives at a different tempo than the East Coast. As a result, we only made a brief stop at Deception Bridge, instead of a proper hike, on our way to IB and E's place in Bellevue.
It was lovely to see them again, after such a long time. IB was in ADC's class in high school, and he has known E since the army, before they became a couple. Their eldest daughter Y is eight months older than A, and their second daughter, AM, is the same age as S. They also have a much younger daughter, N. The five children got on amazingly well together, considering that they hadn't seen each other in about five years. Some of the time they split into a pair and a trio, other times they were all together, but they all played nicely.
Saturday in Seattle began with pouring rain, so we got up slowly, had pancakes for breakfast and only left for Pike Place Market aound 11:00. As well as having a late lunch there, we bought provisions for a picnic supper, while watching a Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing by GreenStage. That was the highlight of the day - despite a light drizzle falling intermittently, it was not too cold, and the production was very good. There was great chemistry between Beatrice and Benedick (who was fantastic, I had him autograph my programme), and as usual, I failed to understand the possibility of Hero and Claudius having a happy ever after. Next day, while discussing the play, S said - on hearing that Kenneth Branagh had also played Benedick - that of course he had, since Hamlet and Benedick were really very similar. I think that there is definitely a seminar paper there, since I think that their main similarity was being written by a man who gave the main characters the best lines (except for Romeo and Juliet, there Mercurio has the best lines).
Next day was much better weather, cloudy and cool but not raining (at least once we had crossed the Cascades to the east). We set off on a hike to Gold Creek Pond, where Y and I took the wrong turning and walked the loop in the other direction from everyone else. Quite frankly, I wasn't bothered, as Y knows a great deal about the local native flowers - her school has a module on them during sixth grade and she remembered a lot. I really enjoyed spotting flowers with someone who was also enthusiastic (rather than mainly humouring me and much more interested in birds). There were far more flowers around the lake than there had been on San Juan Island, and Yael also identified various ferns and flowers that are not in my mini guide, so that was also very useful for the future, too. Once we were done at Gold Creek Pond, we continued to Snoqualmie Falls, a waterfall and the oldest underground hydro-electric plant in the world. The falls were quite small, since we are in the driest time of year and the past winter was very mild, but still impressive enough. After that, our hosts went to an art fair, and we went shopping, to stock up for our road trip south.
Monday was devoted to Mt St Helens. The forecast being for warmer weather now that the weekend was over, we all wore shorts, forgetting that we would be significantly higher than in Seattle - and we weren't dressed warmly enough. That is my only complaint, though - the views of the mountain were incredible, and visibility improved as the day went on and as we went higher. We went to three visitor centres, one telling the story of the 1980 volcanic eruption, one about the return of the forest (much more quickly than expected), and one about the current monitoring and observation of the mountain and its volcano. Each one was at a different altitude with different flowers. I found the human stories of the people who survived very moving, and the differences between the treatment of public and private land in the aftermath was very interesting. Public land became the Mt St Helens National Volcanic Monument, and was left to recover with almost no human intervention, while on private land, which was largely owned by logging companies, the first order of the day was to salvage as much of the lumber from the trees blown down by the lateral blast of the mountainside as possible.
We were tired and hungry by the time we reached our final destination of the day, Vancouver WA. After checking in, we went in search of a restaurant, and found a very pleasant Hawaiian place called Tommy O's. Everyone was very happy with their choice, and especially with their desserts.
We had very high expectations of Portland, where we spent the day today, and it mostly lived up to them. Our vague plan back in DC was to go to Powell's bookshop, SockDreams' brick and mortar store and the Rose Garden. We managed to do two out of three, and several other things, too. We started by parking at Washington Park, which is the cheapest place to park, and on the way to the Rose Garden we walked through the Hoyt Arboretum. The Arboretum has thousands of fully-grown trees, and walking through it is almost like walking through a natural forest. in fact, it is what I had expected the National Arboretum to be like - a green piece of nature in the middle of the town. The Japanese Garden, across the road from the Rose Garden, had been recommended to us, but we decided (mostly at my urging, I must admit) to skip it in favour of the roses. I love rose gardens, and this is really an impressive one. We spent over an hour wandering through bed after bed of roses of every colour, smelling them. Our favourites were Young Lycidas, which smelt just like Turkish delight; Elle, which had a more citrusy rose scent; and Barbra Streisand, which was a combination of the three. If I ever grow roses (Jerusalem is not the ideal climate, I fear, and our window boxes get very little sun), I would pay more attention to their scent than to their appearance, and I'd like one of those.
By this time it was nearly noon, and we took the park shuttle to the MAX station, and then took the train to Pioneer Square, where we had lunch (Chinese steamed dumplings and Voodoo doughnuts) from food trucks and listened to live music, before setting off to Powell's bookshop, rightly called a city of books. We decided to limit ourselves to two books each, and urged the children to buy second-hand, as those books tended to be both cheaper and lighter. We reluctantly dragged ourselves away after just over two hours (ADC said to me: Can't me move in to this shop, to live?), feeling that we had only scratched the surface. I would have happily bought more - we are now considering sending all our books, except those we plan to read on the flight, home by mail so as to free up space and weight in our suitcases - and I am very glad that we went there. It makes me happy to know that such place still exists, despite Amazon and Kindle.
After the bookshop, we experienced the least satisfying part of the day, walking down to the Willamette River and generally wandering around. Maybe we were not in the right places, but it was much less exciting than we expected. Did all the Portlanders go inside to escape the heat (it became significantly hotter as the day went on, hitting 30 around four o'clock)? What we did see was lots and lots of homeless people, far more than anywhere I've ever seen, either in the US or in Europe. I wonder if homeless people, who can easily die of exposure in East Coast winters, move to Portland to find a place with both a mild climate and a tradition of liberalism. Maybe there is more help for them there? It was unnerving going into parks, as almost all the benches were occupied by people and what were clearly all their worldly goods. Homelessness seems such a structural problem that I don't know that small amounts of cash (and who do you choose to give it to?) is of any help.
I will now sound very heartless and shallow, I'm sure, by saying that my mood improved by finding a cupcake bakery and a games shop, and buying their respective wares. Certainly the people who told us we would like Portland were thinking of the shops - although we didn't get to SockDreams, as it is in a relatively outlying neighbourhood, not served by the trams. We ended the day at the Davis Street Tavern, where I had a more interesting meal than the previous day (kale and mushroom risotto beats stir-fry any day), and ADC enjoyed the charcuterie board very much.
Tomorrow will be along day, as we set off to see the Columbia Gorge ... I will probably write again just before we leave San Francisco and the US.
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