Didn’t I say I wanted to go somewhere warm then why am I heading NORTH??
We decided to give the north a whirl and left the morning of July 10th. Our first stop after a full day of travel was Bodega Bay. We had an auspicious start as we saw 6 humpback whales. No matter how often you see whales it is always thrilling.

We left the next day and decided to do our first long stretch leaving 7/11 in the morning and arriving in Crescent City California about 9:30 at night on 7/12.
We saw lots of whales and porpoises too!
Crescent City is almost to the Oregon border in California. It is in red wood country. We ended spending almost a week there waiting for the weather to be good to travel north so we got to explore the area. We took a bus about 20 minutes out of town and were able to enjoy the giant red woods in a famous area called Stout Grove. As any of you know who have seen the redwoods they are so impressive.

One of the other major sites in Crescent City is their light house. It sits on a piece of land that is an island about 20 hours a day. During the low tides you can walk out to it and sometimes get to take a tour of the house. It has been continuously lived in since it went into service in 1856. It still serves as a light house but volunteers live there a month at a time.

Life is fortuitous at times. We were going to leave Saturday but the weather was going to be even better on Sunday so we decided to stay one more night. We went out to dinner and were waiting for our turn ( a very popular place so we expected a longish wait) Good thing we had to wait as what should happen? I got a call from Dr Gibson !! She and her husband were taking a trip out of San Francisco and had just pulled into town. We were able to get together and have dinner. Such a treat to see some one you know when you are so far away.

We had a great time reminiscing about Phoenix and OB -Gyn stuff.
After a week we were ready to move on and so left for however far we could get. We were making good time so we kept going for another day and a half until we got to Astoria, on the Columbia River which divides Oregon from Washington .

The Columbia River entrance is called the Columbia River Bar and when the weather is bad the meeting of the in going tide and waves with the out going river causes huge breaking waves. Even with great weather it was easy to see why this is such a dangerous place. The Coast Guard does their heavy weather rescue training there. Astoria is a town of about 10,000 people. It’s industry is tourism and fishing. The port is busy with lots of fishing boats. The river is amazing to watch as the shipping channel is very near the shore and you see these huge boats going by and they look almost close enough to touch.

After a couple of days in Astoria and several rides on their restored trolley that travels the length of town, we left for the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.

We did another over night trip and got into Port Townsend just before midnight on 7/25. Port Townsend is a quaint little town. It is a tourist town that has other things to do so the stores etc are for real people not just tourists.
Rhonda, one of my friends and former patients lives in Fort Townsend so she took us around to see the sites. It is always great to have some who knows the area and can show you all the things you wouldn’t know to look at. Also, I was impressed that Rhonda must know people who travel on boats, the first two things she asked were do you need to use my car to get supplies and do you want to come to my house to do laundry!!
We did an easy 5 hour trip and are in the the true San Juan Islands. The area is gorgeous. There are islands and islands and islands. Because of all the land and the narrow passages between them the currents are fast and turbulent. We were traveling a 6 knots and all of a sudden a current picked us up and we were going 9.5 knots. We hit a whirl pool that pulled the boat left and then right and there was nothing we could do about it.
We stayed in Fisherman Bay near the town of Lopez. I was able to paddle my kayak into town about a mile a way and get some great ice cream .After two days in Fisherman Bay we moved on to Sucia Island. The scenery is incredible with Mont Baker looming over the horizon.

Time to go .