Orcas Island

We have just arrived home from a wonderful trip up to the San Juan Islands. It was our first trip up there and we had a great time. Marc's mom and sister surprised Marc and were able to make the trip with us. We left on a Friday around 6:00 am and made it to Anacortes, Washington around 11:00. We then drove our minivan onto a ferry and took a 1 and a half hour ferry ride over to Orcas Island. Once we made it to Orcas Island we drove to our hotel up in Eastsound, Washington. (A 15 minute drive to the northern side of the island.) We had a waterfront view from our condo there and it was beautiful. We quickly unpacked the car and then got out in the town and on the beach to check out the local things. The girls were having so much fun looking for seashells, crabs, birds, and starfish that we ended up spending a great deal of time out in the shoreline that you can see from our condo.

Here are some photos from the first part of the trip....

On Saturday morning we were back out on the little beach area looking for more starfish and animal life. When the tide was out you could actually walk over to that island you see from the deck of our condo. That was neat...you just had to be careful the tide didn't come in too fast and leave you hanging out on the island all day!

We then drove down to the southern tip of the island to catch a charter boat to go whale watching. I have always wanted to see the Orca Whales and was so looking forward to this tour. It turns out the the J-Pod which has 22 Orca Whales in it was in residence up there by the islands so our chances of seeing them were pretty good! The boat tour was 3 and one half hours. We ended up spotting the whales out by the San Juan Island and we followed them for about two hours on around the whole island. It was pretty awesome to see them in their natural environment. We also saw a couple of bald eagles hanging out.

Here is a quick video of the whales. Our video camera battery pooped out on us so we didn't get to get many movie clips of the whales.