So now we know where all the traffic went!

Tuesday

Up about 7 am and time to get organized.  After four leisurely days in Bend, we are now moving on to Whidbey Island, Washington and a visit with Burt Jones.  Out of the hotel at 8 to check out, but R was told that “the group” would be taken care of (!) and that there was no individual bill.  So … Katy?!  This particular morning, we went across the street to Shari’s Café & Bakery, which was highly recommended by Hilary for their pie. 

Ten Below: Me, Hil, Paul, Jayne & Jane

As it turned out, Hilary, Jane, Jayne and Paul were there - the same folks we had joined for dinner on Monday night at the Bend restaurant 10 Below  The restaurant, while WAY too cold for me, was very good, but the company was even better!  And, as it happens, we ran into these same people at Shari’s this morning!  They very kindly made room for us at their table.  I had their “traditional” breakfast – scrambled egg, sausage, hash browns and toast.  R, on the other hand, had a BLT sandwich with hash browns and a piece of their berry pie!  Funny waitress – she set the pie just out of R’s reach and told him he couldn’t have it until he cleaned his plate … which he did.  Two thumbs up for their pie, according to R.

We then set out to head northwest to Whidbey Island, Washington.  Bob and Katy, who are also heading this way, had been to Burt’s before, and had planned ahead and made a car ferry reservation at Port Townsend for the 5:30 pm ferry.  Had we known that was the thing to do, we would have done the same – as it was, getting first to Portland and across the Columbia River to Washington state, and then heading past Seattle was excruciating!All in all, our drive took us almost 12 hours to get here, WAY more than we normally want to spend driving in one day!  Much of the way was off-freeway, as the traffic patterns were showing really RED in many places.  No way of knowing if any of this is eclipse traffic, or possibly related to the many wild fires that are burning across both Oregon and Washington, or is just normal for the area. 

Some lovely scenery in Oregon

Hitting the pine trees!

 

As I say, we did our best to avoid the red-lined traffic areas, with more or less limited success.  In some places, we ran into such heavy traffic – usually caused by small towns having one traffic light at the start of town, and a second as we were leaving – that it’s debatable if we saved any time.  I’d like to say that we saved aggravation, but that really wouldn’t be true.  I was a screaming maniac by the time we reach Whidbey Island, that’s for sure! 

Finally reached Burt’s house about 7:45 pm and were warmly greeted by Burt’s two collies, Lambeau and Starr (after the home of the Green Bay Packers, and Bart; Burt and his whole family are avid Packer fans!).  Burt, bless his heart, had waited dinner on us, so after getting settled in his lovely new home, we sat down to a great shrimp dinner with a salad right out of his garden!Pistachio ice cream and a wonderful chocolate-chip cookie for dessert!  We talked until almost midnight, by which time I, at least, was falling asleep.  Didn’t hear anything at all in the night, as Burt’s house is located on several very quiet acres, and while we occasionally could hear jets overhead from Whidbey Island’s Naval Air station, that was about it!  Great sleeping weather too!  After a summer spent in Tucson, having the temperatures go down into the high 50’s and low 60’s is fantastic!

A Tufted Puffin!!!

Such a nice, comfortable boat!

Anacortes harbor

Beautiful day with Mt. Baker in the background

 

Up this morning (Wednesday) to a great breakfast – scrambled eggs with spinach and mushrooms, toast and Burt’s lovely daughter Michelle’s wonderful zucchini muffins!  Great way to start the day!

Out of the house a bit after 9 and heading to Anacortes for a whale watching adventure! 

(Note:  I did make a reservation this morning on the 7:15 am ferry from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend.  Would greatly have preferred a bit later time, but that ferry was the only one that had guaranteed space for us!  I really didn’t want to spend Friday figuring if we could go “stand by” to get across.  So, it will be an early day for us – but certainly not as early as getting up for the eclipse!  I also changed our plans for the next couple of days – instead of going to Medford for two nights, we will go Friday from here to Portland, and then on to Medford the next day.  Rather puts paid to our plans to go wine tasting, but I know we’ll have a good time anyway!)

Nice big boat with indoor cabins on the main deck and the upper deck.  Lots of room to move around, and lovely clean bathrooms … whoops! -  heads, I suppose I should have said.  The boat left right at 10 am and headed out first toward Smith Island.  Here was saw – cannot really believe it even now! – tufted puffins!!!!!!  Definitely life birds for both of us – and I do love puffins!  (Writes she as she is wearing her puffin scarf around her neck – and a special thanks to Katy, for saying a scarf would come in handy!  She was SO right!)   To be honest, we had tried three times in Bar Harbor, Maine, to go out to see puffins – and all three mornings we had been weathered out.  But as I told R, had I known we had a chance of seeing puffins and then we didn’t see them, I would have been disappointed.  But not expecting to see puffins and then seeing several of them – wow!  What an incredible experience!!!!

An Orca!

Two Orcas!

Such beautiful whales!

Fluke from a humpback whale!

Last of the flukes...

Then came the whales.  As it turns out, many of the towns in this area have whale watching boat trips, so boats were coming from as far away as Victoria.  They have some sort of system where if one boat spots something, they let all the other boats know – a great way for everyone to have the sighting experience for their clients.  In this case, we saw several pods of Orcas – such beautiful whales – and then on our way back to Anacortes, we saw a Humpback whale, all by itself, apparently looking for lunch!  And speaking of lunch, the boat had a very nice little lunch spot; R and I had great hot dogs and Bob and Kate had chili dogs. 

I was comparing this experience to our last whale watching experience out of Victoria.  Then, we were in basically a large Zodiac (an inflatable rubber boat) and wearing orange pants and jackets (which smelled like oil) to keep us warm, as the entire trip was spent sitting in a seat, bouncing around on the waves.  This was the deluxe trip, for sure!  Two nice bathrooms, food and water on demand, and a nice, warm place to sit out of the wind!  This was definitely the way to go!!

Got back to the dock around 2:30 pm and back to Burt’s about 3 pm.  I basically crashed and burned – the next thing I knew it was 5 pm.  I put a load of clothes into Burt’s very fancy washing machine (with his help, of course!).  This should take us to Southern California when I can use Anne’s washer and dryer. 

Getting close to dinner time, as things are smelling wonderfully in the house!  More later!

m

xxx