Travel Log: Fact-Finding in the San Juan Islands

Day Four:

This morning I ditched the family, because they were crampin’ my style. I left the hotel at about 8:00am (though I don’t really know whether that was Pacific time or Mountain), and I immediately headed off in the wrong direction. Like I said, I can’t tell directions without landmarks, and using the water as a landmark (which I was doing) is a pretty moronic idea. (The sun was hidden by fog, so I couldn’t use that as a landmark – besides, I’d learned yesterday that the sun rises in the south-west here, so it can’t be trusted. At least, I swear that was south-west.)

So, I headed south when I wanted to be heading north. Fortunately, the island is small, and you can’t get too far off course. I turned around when I hit the water, and checked a map, and popped Jim Croce’s Greatest Hits into the CD player.

A raccoon scampered out in front of the car, and I almost ran him over. Fortunately, he was quick, despite being big and fat.

I tried to stop at the Lime Kiln State Park, but they wanted to charge me five bucks for parking, and there was no way I was going to pay five bucks. So I continued on north toward Roche Harbor. I wanted to check the area around the Mausoleum (I mentioned that yesterday, remember?), so I wandered around on roads that said “Private Drive – Residents Only”. I drove on several of these roads, and though I didn’t see anyone get offended by my presence, I’m sure someone did. Maybe it’s because I was blasting “Bad Bad Leroy Brown”.

My next stop was a little foot trail above Roche Harbor, where I’d been told (erroneously) that there were some lime kilns. I chased a deer around for a while, and hiked the whole loop, and went to the scenic overlook, and I discovered that the trail didn’t really go anywhere, and there were no lime kilns, and the scenic overlook didn’t give you much of a view of anything. Or maybe I just expect too much.

So I went down to the Lime Creek Café, and ate breakfast, and watched CNN. They were interviewing Orrin Hatch, which I thought was a huge coincidence because, like, he’s from Utah, and I’M from Utah, too! What a small world.

I chatted with the cashier, who gave me some useful info and a copy of the menu.

Finally, I went to the Hotel De Haro again, for the purpose of asking one simple question. I had been told (erroneously again – and by the same spreader of lies) that the Hotel De Haro had no phones in the rooms, and I wanted to know where the nearest payphones would be, if you were a guest in the hotel.

So I walked on in, and talked to the woman behind the desk, whose name was Berit because her parents were mean.

ME: I have a question. The rooms don’t have phones, right?

BERIT: Uh... I think they have phones... Yeah, they have phones.

ME: Really? I’d been told that they didn’t.

BERIT: They do have phones.

ME: Do you mind if I go look in one of the rooms?

BERIT: [getting suspicious] There’s a payphone down here you can use.

So I had to explain that I was not trying to make a phone call on the hotel’s tab, and that I only wanted to look at the phone, not use it. I don’t think she entirely believed me, but she let me upstairs anyway. I looked really quick and then hurried back downstairs, trying to prove that I was not up to something.

In the afternoon, I went back to the hotel, and the rest of the family took the ferry over to Orcas Island. I made a couple of stops – one to the drugstore to buy a pair of nail clippers, because I was going insane, and another stop to the antique store below the hotel, because I wanted to ask a couple of questions and look around. The rest of the afternoon I spent writing.

And then the family came home and we ate lasagna, and then we watched Beauty and the Beast, because Holly is the boss. She also sat backwards on a chair until it tipped over and she crashed to the floor and cried and cried. But she was fine.

And then I wrote all night, and I’m pleased with the results.

Fewer pictures today: 64, I think, which puts me at 354 for the week.





All material on this site is copyrighted by Robison E. Wells, 2004.