Tourists


Tourists

On our boat we have a water maker. It is an amazing piece of machinery. Through a series of filters, membranes, pumps, and valves, we get pure and clean drinking water from the sea. We generally run the water maker every 3 or 4 days for a couple of hours and it makes enough water for us to do everything. Shower, dishes, drinking water, and laundry (yes we have a washing machine onboard). Its a crucial piece of equipment and its great...when it works. We had one of the high pressure hoses fail on us a few days ago, don't worry I had a spare hose, but now that I had to use my spare hose, I had no more spare hose. Its a custom made hose that we just can't get anywhere so I called our good friend Lani in Seattle and he was kind enough to offer to pick up a new one and bring it to Kenmore Air and have them fly it up to us. Amazing. Thanks Lani. It was going to take a couple of days for the hose to be made so we decided to be complete tourists on San Juan Island.

We went to one of those little racks that hold tons of brochures about things that nobody wants to do and decided to do some of those things. Brochures...check. Bus pass...check. Backpacks with lunches, camera, sunscreen, chap stick, extra clothes, sunglasses, cheez-its...check.
 
First things first. Roam around town till we find some wifi to steal so I can check emails and pay some bills. Second things second...get on the buss. I instantly knew this was going to be a great day. Our buss driver looked like Santa, he talked like Santa, he even claimed to be Santa. Apparently he drove a buss in the off season (June must be the off season when the elves are on vacation). Anyway, nice jolly guy.

Now that we have introductions out of the way (I told him I have been a good boy but I think he knows better), off to check out the Sculpture Park. I am not an art critique at all. I generally walk around and say, “I could make that.” Or, “I don't get it.” Or we just try to come up with the name of the piece before we look at the sign. It was fun.
 

Next we go to Roche Harbor and roam around the docks, look at the big boats and say “why isn't my boat that big?” and have some lunch. Then we hike up to the Mausoleum and get some camera time in and take a little snooze in the grass. I can't tell you the last time I had enough time to lay in the grass on a nice sunny day. It was great! Back to the buss stop and guess who picks us up? Santa. He's still jolly.


Next stop...English Camp. Santa told us to hike down the hill...it's the wrong way. The only thing down the hill was the snack bar. So back up the hill we go. We get all the way to the tippety-top of San Juan Island and check out the view and it's beautiful! We even have a little fox hang out with us on top for a while. I think he wanted my cheez-its but there was no way I was handing them over. They are mine and they are precious. It was a great hike that we unfortunately didn't have a ton of time for at the top because of our detour at the snack bar. We had to be back at the bottom pretty quick if we wanted to catch the bus on it's loop around the Island. It's Santa again. He asked how the snack bar was and when I told him we went to the top he didn't seem to understand why we would want to do that when there was a perfectly good snack bar at the bottom.

Next stop...Lime Kiln State Park. We did see some whales from the park but unfortunately they wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a picture (sorry Mom).

By this point we were pretty beat. We had walked/hiked about 10 miles and my dogs were barking (code...dogs = feet, barking = ouch). We decided to skip the Alpaca farm and the Lavender farm even though I had the brochures. And really it was because I couldn't even fake being interested in either of them. We did drive by both of them with Santa and he was nice enough (jolly enough) to give a little info on both.

All in all a pretty fun day. I asked Santa for a Red Rider BB Gun for Christmas when we got off of the bus. He wasn't amused.



The next day we got our custom made stainless steel high pressure hose for our water maker delivered from Kenmore Air (thanks again Lani). I think that may be the highlight of the trip so far for Brenda. She was pretty excited to get a package right off of the plane. It may even beat getting a bus ride from Santa.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Double Birthday and the Italian Connection

Image
There is an interesting thing that happens on this side of the world. When we left Seattle, we crossed the international date line which puts us one whole day ahead of where we came from. Basically, we lost a day. Because we lost a day, Brenda turned the ripe old age of 40 one day sooner than she would have if we were in Seattle. On September the 12 th in Vanuatu, we got to celebrate her big day. But since she says her home is in Seattle, we also got to celebrate her 40 th birthday when September 12 th happened on that side of the world. Basically, she got the longest birthday known to mankind...2 big days long. There is another interesting thing that happens when you are cruising the world on a sailboat. You run into other cruisers that come from all parts of the world and all backgrounds. Where we are currently moored on Aore Island in Vanuatu, there are 4 boats that are from 4 different countries. It's an international coalition. Our newest neighbors jus...
Read more

The Garnet Ghost Town

Image
For years before we left, I had always told people that we were going to sail around the world. Now that we've been out for a few years, I still tell people the same thing. It's a concept that makes sense to the average Joe – a circle around the globe. A start and an end. One complete lap. When a random stranger we meet on the road asks what we are doing, I still answer with, “we are sailing around the world.” But that explanation is and has always been just a quick way to put into words a concept that still doesn't make sense to most people. Because in reality, we aren't going to sail around the world. One big lap of the globe doesn't really have any appeal to us. Although we aren't realistically going to make a big giant loop – with a beginning and an end – we are doing our best to see the world, and we'll be doing it for as long as it takes. So, I think the proper way to explain what we are doing, is to just say that we are out here to see the ...
Read more

A Crossroads

Image
There comes a time in every sailor's life when some hard decisions have to be made. We are at that point. We are currently in a little town on the Baja called Santa Rosalia. It's amazingly different than any other place we've seen so far in Mexico, and after 9 months in the country, we've seen a lot of places. Santa Rosalia is a mining town. Copper was discovered here in the 1860's, and after a few change of hands and some tax breaks and incentives, a French company took over the mines and the town took off. They imported wood from Oregon and Canada, and with that wood, they did something that we haven't seen anywhere else in Mexico. They built stuff...using wood. Nearly everything in Mexico is built from concrete, steel, and cinder blocks, so, without having to use too much brainpower, it's pretty easy to see that this place is different. No hard math or powers of deduction are needed - it's staring us right in the face in the f...
Read more