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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.

Katja

3 Comments

  1. Patricia Tryon

    But what did you all WEAR? ;-)

    Reply
  2. Katja (Post author)

    Oh, right!

    For the Friday night cocktails, I was all Chico’s: Travelers wide black pants, black camisole, purple fringed sweater.

    I brought some nice duds for a Saturday breakfast that didn’t happen.

    For the wedding, I wore a white and melon (dreamsicle orange?) paisley silk dress – bias cut, scoop neck, cap sleeves, just below the knee with a tweedy orange jacket from Nordstrom’s. I also had a snazzy pale pink Ascot kind of straw hat, but it was vetoed at the last minute by my children :-(.

    Reply
  3. Patricia Tryon

    Sounds stunning!

    Kids are so… conventional (when it comes to their parents). :-(

    Reply

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