Travel Log: Fact-Finding in the San Juan Islands

Day Two:

The alarm in the hotel was the loudest thing I think I’ve ever heard. For several minutes after it sounded, Erin was shaking. She got out of bed to get prettified, and I went down to the continental breakfast. In addition to bagels and muffins, they had Twinkies and Ding Dongs. I grabbed a few for the drive.

We’d planned three hours to get from SeaTac to Anacortes, because it was about 90 miles, and during the middle of rush hour. Due to a rift in time and space, we made the trip in about twenty minutes. Or maybe I just fell asleep. Still, we made it to Anacortes with plenty of time to spare.

Rather than buying groceries out on the San Juan Islands, where prices can get high, we opted for stocking up on the mainland. My mom, who’s nuts, signed up for a Safeway membership card two years ago – the last time she was in Anacortes – and somehow managed to hold onto it for that long, and brought it with her. However, we discovered that the Safeway was no longer a Safeway, but a Food Pavilion, so she signed up for a new Food Pavilion card. As she was doing so, she told the cashier how she’d brought her two year old Safeway card, and was dismayed by the name change. The cashier told her that the Food Pavilion had never been a Safeway, and that the Safeway was still going strong, two blocks down the street.

We stopped at a park where lots of things were made out of rocks. The park also sported a plastic Santa and Frosty in a rowboat pulled by electric reindeer. Holly fell off of something, and cried.

The ferry was cold, and Holly wouldn’t go inside – she insisted on staying out on the bow, staring at the water like her salty, sea-faring grandpa, who has never stepped foot inside a ferry passenger cabin. Instead, he stands out front with his binoculars and camera, watching for whales, and never seeing any.

When we finally reached the island, Holly needed a nap, so Erin and my mom stayed in the hotel, and my dad and I went off to scout the island. While driving, I told him the major plot points of Book 2 and what exactly I was looking for. I’d tell you what they are, but then you wouldn’t buy the book. He still will – he has to.

For dinner, Erin and I took my parents to a restaurant called the Downrigger, which was a pretty fancy place, with excellent food and prices to match (fancy, not excellent), but they still had t-shirts for sale. This is very much a tourist town. I ate salmon, because I’ve been on a bit of a salmon kick lately, and wanted to try something really fresh and yummy. Erin had a steak, which turned out to be better than my salmon. Holly had a grilled cheese sandwich which may or may not have been good – she wouldn’t taste it. The bill came, and I thought about how many books I would need to sell to pay the tab, and then fondly remembered that I have a day job.

And then we waddled home, stuffed full of salmon and bread pudding. We watched Dumbo to help get Holly to bed, and then I wrote this. And then I finished.

(P.S.: 130 pictures today, and I haven’t even started taking shots of San Juan. It’s a good thing my laptop has a lot of storage space.)



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