San Juan Island

Just back from a family wedding on San Juan Island. We flew to Seattle, rented a car, hooked up with family, drove to Anacortes and took the ferry to San Juan. The ferry is nicely accessible, with an elevator from the car deck up to the people deck (whatever that’s called). The hour long ferry ride was fun, we passed little forested islands and watched the other boats.

We stayed at Halvorsen House. Not, strictly speaking, wheelchair accessible, but doable with help. There are rooms in the main house (up three steps), and there’s an apartment on the lower level, accessible via a (gravel) driveway. HH is a few miles outside of town, surrounded by trees, cattle in the fields and large quantities of wild blackberry bushes. The breakfasts were a big hit with the kids (I never knew you could do that to French toast – seems to be a B&B thing).

We visited Lime Kiln Point State Park in hopes of seeing orcas. No such luck, but the park itself on the rocky west coast of the island was beautiful. There is a 300 yard long wheelchair accessible trail from the parking lot to an observation post by the water, from which we saw sea kayakers, many boats, and the Canadian islands across the strait.

The wedding was also beautiful; beautiful couple, beautiful vows, beautiful setting overlooking the water, wonderful food and dancing. There was much cousin bonding (my kids, their cousins, their cousins’ cousins – is there a word for that relationship?).

We experienced the downside of such a beautiful tourist destination on Sunday, when we lined up at 9:30 am for the 1:00 pm ferry, and not a moment too soon! My brother-in-law arrived at 11:00 and wound up on the 7:00 pm ferry.