thornbush report

Sorry it has taken so long to start my retrospective. It was harder than I thought to locate pictures from twenty years ago.

Here's pix of my friend Peggy Sue's digs on Lopez. This is where she was living when we first started looking for a place. We really thought we'd end up on Lopez near her. Lopez had some advantages like only being thirty minutes away instead of a hour or more on the ferry. But we didn't find any parcel that had all the qualities we wanted so we began to look on San Juan. Good thing we didn't buy on Lopez as Peggy Sue moved back to Friday Harbor a few years after we had bought here. It's so nice to be on the same island!

After much dickering with the sellers, the property finally closed in May of 1989. We started camping on it right away. Usually we would spend at least one weekend a month there at least during the summer. And each summer we'd spend at least one week of vacation really "improving" the place. The second picture shows an improved situation, so it must be the second summer. You will note a tarp over the tent, AND a camping cupboard that housed some of our equipment while we were away.

One year we came back to find that honey bees had discovered our cupboard and built quite a hive. Needless to say, we decided to let them have it rather than argue the point.

Here are pictures from that same camping area today. My brother-in-law Eric now owns this real estate and may build a house on it one day. But the view down the valley is now full of alders.

To be continued . . .