Recap- San Juan Islands and Wedding

Oh, to be done with recapping and on to whats actually happening...

At the beginning of October, I went up to the San Juan Islands (just north of Seattle) with my dad for a quick trip. Some times we plan out every detail from where we are are going to stay to the activities booked well in advance. This was not one of those times. In all my traveling I have learned a few things: Some places its nice to get there and find the area that you want to stay in before booking a hotel. Others, you need a reservation well in advance because there is a U2 concert in town that night and all the hotels in a 30 mile radius of Dublin are booked, leaving you stranded until 11:30pm driving around to end up in a small room above a very busy pub....Anyways.

So for this trip, I was thinking that since its the end of tourist season up there, we would have no trouble finding somewhere to stay when we got there. This probably would have been true if we had tried to find something before all the offices closed at 5. And that would have been done had we not been 5 minutes too late for the ferry, which left us waiting for an hour and a half waiting for the next one. I know what your thinking. Isn't that an hour and a half that you could have found something..... but no. Dont really have any exceses there. The good news in misisng that ferry is that our sunset ferry ride was gorgeous!!

Anacortes to Friday Harbor

And just like the lodging, I thought we could get there and book a boat tour to go see the orca's, since that was my main reason for going up there. Wrong. Because it is the end of the season, there was only 1 boat even going and by the time we called they only had 3 spots left. We needed 4. Curses. In my effort to find a boat, I did get ahold of a wonderful lady who gave me the insider scoop that the Orca's were headed back to the islands from a 3 day hiatus and she called me about an hour before they were supposed to be passing along the coast. So, after spending all morning waiting to see these whales, thinking I would have to come again next year if this was a failure, they came! Success!

After a day in the Islands, we headed down to Seattle for my second cousins wedding. Justin flew in that night. It was a beautiful small ceremony and reception at the Salish Lodge in Snoqualamie. And as always, it was great to see our family again.