Spring Break in the San Juan Islands, Washington

Whenever Nick gets a break from school, it's kind of a big deal. He had a Spring Break at the end of March this year, which is a new thing for both he and I, since BYU doesn't take a spring break. Unfortunately, the weeks leading up to the break, he was slammed with tests and finals, and I was working and trying to finish my last class of my undergrad degree online. So, that meant neither of us really had time to plan, and we couldn't really come up with anything that was (1) in our budget and (2) sounded worthwhile since the weather is just always rainy.

But, then I saw one of my cousins post on Facebook about their trip to the San Juan Islands! It looked beautiful, and they saw orca whales! I looked it up and realized we could easily drive there. So I started talking to Nick about it, and we ended up planning a long weekend there just a few days before. It was a little stressful, but we are so glad we ended up going!

The San Juan Islands are an archipelago in the most northern part of Washington state. From Portland, it takes about 4 hours to get to the ferry which takes you over to the islands. There are several islands, but the largest is San Juan. It is definitely the "tourist" place of the islands, rather than the "getaway" island for people's million dollar vacation homes. It also has a lot of historical and national landmarks/ things to see. We visited from Thursday to Sunday, and stayed 2 nights on San Juan Island. Our last day and night we ferried over to Orcas Island, which is smaller but still established.

Thursday, March 29 

This day was the drive and the ferry ride over to San Juan Island. The drive was not too bad....except for that we may have gotten a speeding ticket :/ It was clearly a trap (right around a huge bend in the road, the speed changed two miles earlier, etc.), so it was a total bummer. I also had to work the whole drive up, which was boring for Nick. But, it was what we get for not deciding to go until only two days before (I literally asked for Thursday and Friday off work on Monday....not the best move)!

We made it to the ferry on time, which was what we were worrying about. The ferries were awesome! A new experience for both of us to ferry our car over, but we had made a reservation for the time we would be there, and we just drove right up! It took about an hour to get from the mainland to the islands, and it was a beautiful ride, just a little rainy (what else is new!).

We arrived at Friday Harbor, and drove right off the ferry right into the town. It was really cute, and small! We wanted to make the most of our day, so we headed off to the north side of the island, to get a hike in before it got too late and we'd have to find our place to stay in the dark. We did a short hike up Young Hill, only 2 miles or so round trip. On the way up, we passed a cemetery of British soldiers who had apparently occupied the island during a conflict with the US. (It had something to do with the "Pig war", and a treaty being signed over a specific parallel which the islands land right in the middle of). The view up at the top was really beautiful, we could see Canada in one direction and the Olympic Peninsula in the other direction!

We made our way down (after getting lost for a minute), so we could get to our Airbnb before it got dark. Since we planned our trip so last minute, there weren't a ton of options on the island for places to stay. Nick found this one (I may or may not have already passed it over...), and it turned out great! It was a sort of "glamping" experience, meaning that we weren't tent camping, but we cooked over a fire and used an outhouse and outdoor shower (which was actually AWESOME, sounds terrible, but wasn't). We stayed in this little cabin-like thing that was made out of cement and had glass bottles set in it for design; it was called the ModCob. It was way the heck in the middle of nowhere, (like the directions were the kind which said "pass the county road sign, then keep going a few more miles, look for a sign on the tree that says 'otto', and go left, pass the mirror, if you see Frog Hollow, you've gone too far"). It was good we got there when it was light outside.

Friday, March 30 

The next morning, we miraculously had wifi in the ModCob for a few minutes, which was just long enough for me to get a reservation for the ferry home in a few days (yes I know, pretty important). While I worked on that, Nick made a fire so we could heat up our breakfast burritos which he made at home before we left. Making a fire with wet wood is no small task, so it took a while, but the burritos were delicious! We got ready for the day and headed out for the North side of the island.

The island was relatively small. It takes only 20 minutes to get from the east to the westside of the island, but about 40 minutes from the north to south. We sorta ended up going all over this day, but it wasn't that bad! Except for the spotty wifi all over which made navigating a little hard.

We arrived in Roche Harbor (the north side), and were looking for hikes in the area, when we happened across a sign which said "Mausoleum". We both asked each other if that was like a grave marker or something? Nick did a quick search, and found a podcast on this very mausoleum, so we spent 20 minutes listening to it before we walked out to it. It was great! We learned all about the wealthy business man who owned most of the island because he owned the limestone quarries. Before he died, he designed this mausoleum after Free Mason and Methodist symbolism. It was a surprisingly awesome thing to see in the middle of a forest on an island. Also funny to note, the podcast told us about all the crazy ghost stories associated with the place. We weren't too phased since we were visiting around 10 am....

After the mausoleum, we came across a huge sculpture garden. We spent a surprising amount of time there, but it was fun.

We then finally found one of the hikes I was looking for. It took us up near some of the old limestone quarries, which were mined up until the 1950s. At one point, over 15 quarries were in operation on the island. The hike was quiet and pretty, the sun was shining and that's all we wanted so we were happy! After the hike, we headed towards Friday Harbor, the main town that the ferry departs from, for lunch. (I forgot to mention we grabbed dinner here the night before at a Thai place- it was ridiculously expensive, but it seems like that's the island vibe!). The upside of the expensive Thai place the night before was that we saw a sign for homemade tamales right behind it, and they were so good! Still expensive, but so delicious. After lunch, we spent some time walking around the shops in the town, it was a cute little tourist town.

After we perused the town, we headed for the south side of the island, where we would spend our afternoon hiking on a prairie, one of the last native ones in the United States. This was the location of the "American camp", where the American soldiers were stationed during the conflict with the British. It was a fun hike across different landscape than the forest we are used to in the Pacific Northwest. There were so many driftwood beaches to see (Nick was really excited about this, and yes, we brought some home), and wildlife all around! I had read this was a good place to see bald eagles, which just happens to be Nick's favorite animal. I didn't mention this to him, but I was sure to point out every bird we saw....they just happened to all be seagulls. That is, until I gave up and stopped pointing them out, and then Nick yells "That's a bald eagle!". And it was! We were up on a cliff so we were really close to the eagle, and got to watch for a good three or four minutes. It sort of made Nick's life (his words). We also saw some huge ravens (?) hunting/ catching bunnies on our walk back. It was definitely worth the hike in the wind.

  

We were pretty tired by this point, so we made a quick drive to Lime Kiln state park, to look for whales and watch the sunset. It was really windy so we knew we wouldn't be able to see any whale spouts, and the sun was taking forever to set....so we called it a day a little early and made it home in time to make a fire right as it was getting dark.

It hadn't rained all day (yay for good weather on vacation when it was supposed to rain the whole time) so making the fire was much quicker this time. We cooked our tinfoil dinners (which Nick also made the night before we left, he's awesome) then took showers in the outdoor shower! Sounds weird, or crazy, but it was actually really well made, very secluded, and had hot water. We finished the night with s'mores and a movie!

Saturday, March 31

We slept in (again, yay for vacation), and packed up our glamping site. We really enjoyed the ModCob, it was the most interesting Airbnb we've ever done! And it made our last minute vacation affordable. Camping is so much easier when you have a bed, a space heater, and a fridge, my goodness!

We then drove back to Friday Harbor, where the ferry would be picking us up to take us to Orcas Island for our whale watching tour and last night! These ferries were a little risky, since it was tricky to figure out which times they were taking cars between the islands, or only back towards Seattle, but it all worked out. We made it to Orcas and drove directly to Eastsound which was on the other side of the island (a whopping 20 minutes away!). We found our whale watching tour, which we had Groupon-ed (2 for 1 all the way), and got ready to go. I was very excited at this point, since Nick had never seen a whale, and when I asked the guide if they had seen any yet that day, she told me that they had seen a ton of whales already!

This whale watching tour was very different than any I've ever done before, so we didn't quite know what to expect, but it was great. The boat had two stories, which made the view all the better! And they provided us brand new, heavy duty windbreakers which really helped. This was a 3-4 hour tour, which I later realized was because they literally had to get into Canadian waters to see the whales. Of course, like any good whale watching tour, we also saw seals and sea lions along the way. And, since we were going past islands, there were deer and rams and bald eagles to observe too! It was well worth the price we paid, and the length of the trip.

After all the other wildlife, we finally got to the whales. It was SO neat to see! The orcas were far out from the boat, but once the engine was off, you could hear them spouting! And, since they travel in pods, we watched over 7 whales as they travelled together. It was really neat to see them interact, spout, "spy-hop", and splash their tails. Right at the end of the trip, the whales made a turn towards us and we were pretty close to the male of the pod as he passed by. It was really incredible and made the trip so worth it!

 

After we made it back, we drove towards town, and looked for a place to eat. Strangely enough, almost all the restaurants required reservations! We were confused, since this town was so small. Somehow, we found a low-key pizza place and grabbed a table before the rush came. (We also happened to share the restaurant with almost everyone on our boat tour, haha). After pizza, we walked around town, grabbed ice cream (after the owner came back from a solid 15 minute break...), and drove to our Airbnb for the night. The lady was friendly and nice, and the room was great.

Sunday, April 1 

It was our last day of vacation, and we knew it would consist of a lot of sitting in a car, so we went for a walk in the morning before we headed for the ferry/ home. It was a beautiful Easter morning! We walked up to the top of the hill (we were supposed to do this the night before, as it's known for it's sunsets, but....the pizza got the best of us and we were too tired) and spent some time reading about the life of Christ in his last week, and the story of His resurrection. We had the place to ourselves, along with a bald eagle and a few other critters. It was a nice way to spend time pondering on our Savior and the importance of His life and resurrection.

 

We made our way back to the car, and headed for the ferry. We finally had enough service to start listening to conference, so we turned it on! We had been hearing pieces here and there about the big exciting changes and things that were being announced, but we hadn't been able to listen for ourselves! We made a final walk down to the dock and enjoyed watching the ferry come into the dock- it's a huge boat. The water was so clear, and the seashells were huge- we'd like to come back to Orcas island when we get the chance.

We hopped on the ferry, then had a 4-5 hour drive home through Seattle, a detour past the Army base in the area (which my brother-in-law Jim was stationed at for a year), a stop for gas, a rainstorm, and a few hours of listening to conference before we finally made it back to Portland. Even though it was all last minute, we had a great vacation overall! And Nick was SO ready to go back to school the next day. Haha!

The Trail of Ten Falls

We had an open Saturday, so we looked up a hike to do near us! It wasn't great weather, but it wasn't pouring rain either, which in Oregon means it's basically great weather. We found the Trail of Ten Falls, which looked incredible (we use AllTrails, the best hiking app or site around). It was a little over an hour away from us, so we got an early start on the drive to Silver Falls State Park near Salem, OR. It was really way the heck out there, but every drive through the country in Oregon is beautiful. We got to the huge parking lot and there were only a few cars there, which is always a good sign for us.

The trail was a 8 or 9 mile loop with huge waterfalls every so often. There were more than ten falls, but we lost count, most of them you could walk behind too. These were definitely the largest waterfalls we had seen in Oregon (beside Multnomah). And everything was incredibly green. It was a great day, a little wet, but we went prepared, and really enjoyed the hike. The pictures speak better than I can to how cool it was!

 

The Central Coast: Lincoln City and Oceanside, OR

The day after we got back from Crater Lake and Bend, we headed out for the coast. This was our plan since we had trouble deciding what to do for our vacation, so we went with the mountains and the coast, and split them right in half. It worked out well since it meant we got a night at home to recuperate, do our laundry, and replenish our food supply!

So, Thursday the 4th we got up and started the drive to Lincoln City. I had done a lot of research on a ton of coastal towns, and came to the conclusion that most of them offer the same things- ocean views, storm watching (in the winter), potentially whale watching, good pubs, some crabbing/ fishing/ clam digging,  and nice hotels/inns. So, it didn't really matter where we went! But, I had found a neat hike I wanted to do near Lincoln City, so we decided to start there, then work our way up the coast to Astoria (we ended up sticking much more south than that due to many things, so Astoria will have to be another trip).

Portland is only 1.5 hours from the cost, at it's most direct route. But we were going slightly south as well, so we had about a 2 hour drive. This seemed daunting as we started (we were pretty tired of driving considering the last two days included ~10 hours of it), but we were quickly cheered up as we started the drive. Not only was there no rain, but on top of that the country was beautiful! The whole drive was vineyards and groves and such green land! We also came across the Evergreen Air Museum, it was literally right off the highway. I googled it as we passed and found out that the original Spruce Goose is there? I definitely had no idea what in the world that was, but I knew as I read the name aloud that Nick would know, and that he would be really excited about it...I was totally right! He told me all about it being a flying boat developed for WWII but never used, etc. and we spent the rest of the drive learning about Howard Hughes, the Spruce Goose, and how in the world it ended up in the middle of Oregon. We hope we can make it back to the museum sometime!

Lincoln City and God's Thumb Hike

So we arrived north of Lincoln City on the coast, and the rain still hadn't started. We were planning to hike so that was extremely ideal. We quickly started on our short 1.5 mile hike up a hill called God's Thumb. It had a really steep climb at the end but was an easy hike otherwise. The top of the ridge was pretty windy, but it was a beautiful view and so worth it. As soon as we hiked to the top, it started pouring rain! That on top of the wind made it slightly scary, so we started making our way down quickly. It was muddy but beautiful, even with the gray clouds.

This doesn't look very steep or high, but it definitely was!

Mud mud mud....we are just used to it now.

Roads End State Park and Cape Kiwanda

We were thoroughly soaked, so we changed into some dry clothes and went to eat our lunch while watching the big waves the storm was causing at Roads End State Park (literally just a parking lot). After that, we hopped on the 101 and headed up the coast towards Oceanside. Along the way we stopped at Cape Kiwanda, the first of three capes to explore on the northern coast. It was a beautiful beach, and we arrived as the rain stopped! So we walked the beach a bit, while we watched the crazy surfers trying to catch some waves in the choppy and cold water! Nick may have gotten a little wet as we explored the edge of the beach, but then we got caught in the rain anyway so it didn't matter too much.

Cape Kiwanda

I couldn't believe these surfers! There were half a dozen of them out there! Look at the wind blowing off the waves though, and you'll know how choppy the water must have been. 

We hopped back in the car- wet for the second time that day- and finished the drive north to our AirBnb in Oceanside. It was great! A cute bed and breakfast, it was on a hill with an awesome ocean view we didn't even appreciate until the next morning, when the clouds cleared. We settled in and started to look for a place for dinner- there were only two options! But, we think we chose right because we had a really delicious meal which was nice after a cold day. Then we hurried back to the BnB where they had the fixings for smores, which we made over the stove. (FYI the square marshmallows actually aren't that great, way too much marshmallow!). 

We met the host briefly which was fun because she ended up being the Relief Society president of her ward! We knew they were Mormon because they had Book of Mormon videos on their shelf, haha. We watched The Aviator, which just happens to be the story of the Spruce Goose creator, Howard Hughes, so that was perfect for our education about him earlier in the day. Halfway through the movie, the host came down and brought us some popcorn with their homemade rosemary oil on it (totally a Relief Society president right?)! It was so nice of her, and really made our night. 

Cape Lookout

The next morning, she made us an awesome breakfast (this was a real BnB) and it was German Pancakes, Nick's favorite! Which was fun. It was a beautiful home and place to stay with a great view of the ocean. It wasn't raining, for just a minute, so we tried to hurry out onto the hike we were looking to do, called Cape Lookout. After going the wrong way for a few minutes, grabbing some gas, and turning around, we made it to the hike and made it most of the way there and back without any rain. That's always a treat in Oregon! 

There were a few parts of the hike with this boardwalk, but then we saw a bunch of the boards in a pile. Looked like they had been washed out from the rain!

It was so neat to see the rain on the coast, when it wasn't raining where we were!  

It's hard to tell, but we were way the heck out there on a little cape. It was extremely windy at the point, and the hikes along the edges were a little scary! Only because it's a straight cliff down to the ocean, which meant Nick was constantly looking over the side....

It was a beautiful hike, even though it was a little muddy. It took us all the way out on the cape, which you can't drive out to. It was very windy, but the view of the ocean was amazing and so beautiful with all the rain clouds and the sun poking through. It was just the right length, but it made us tired by the end of it! So we ran back to the AirBnb (we had borrowed their binoculars hoping for some whale sightings! so we had to return them) took a shower since we had gotten all wet and muddy and had a few hours in the car still, then made our way to the Cape Meares Lighthouse! 

Cape Meares Lighthouse

The wind was so strong that we only walked around the lighthouse for a few minutes, but it was pretty neat to see it up close! This lighthouse's light used prisms and mirrors to project the light far out into the ocean. It talked about how only 3 lights like that one exist in the world. It was huge! And neat to see. 

Nick's not a punk with the hood, it was just extremely windy! We parked our car and then could feel it being pushed by the wind.

This was the view of Three Arch Rocks (literally the name) from Cape Lookout, the hike we did. See the picture below to see them from the other side!

This was the view of Three Arch Rocks from the Cape Meares lighthouse, later in the day!

This was so random, but it was an interesting tree at the lighthouse.

Tillamook 

Then, we headed towards home, with a stop in Tillamook. That was the closest place for lunch, and we found a great restaurant called Pacific Restaurant. It was good prices, but some of the best clam chowder I've ever had! I'd go back there just for that. After we ate, we made a quick stop at the Tillamook Factory, a mile out of town. A new visitors center is currently under construction, so we just walked through the little temporary exhibit they had up. We still got to taste different cheeses and grab some ice cream, so it was definitely worth it! We discovered that Tillamook chocolate is the best ice cream in the world. 

Then, we drove an hour home in the rain, through the mountains, and arrived home! We were exhausted, even though our trip was extremely low key. It was perfect, and we were very glad we did it. Next time we make it to the coast we hope to explore Astoria, as that's one of the more popular towns! But, we really enjoyed the Central Coast a lot. It's just a different kind of beautiful than you might expect.