Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Visiting Other Islands

I live on an island in the San Juan Archipelago.  When I leave home, I go "off-island", usually this is to the mainland or "America".  This month, I made several trips off-island to visit neighboring islands.  Let me introduce you to a few of these.

First, I visited Shaw Island, population of about 240.  Our County Textile Guild was holding one of our quarterly Meetings in the Shaw Community Center.  Since the basket group meets in this same hall every month, I am most familiar with this site.

house on Guemes
However, I've never been to Guemes, which is a five minute ferry ride from Anacortes which is on Fidalgo Island.  Two friends and I have always wanted to see Guemes so we made a special trip earlier in the month.  It's nice.  About the same size as Shaw which meant we were done touring it in about an hour.  We spent the afternoon walking around Washington Park, on Fidalgo, about two miles from the ferry.
Washington Park

On May 12th I had the opportunity to attend the Lopez Lamb and Wool Festival.  The Textile Guild put a booth up to promote ourselves to Lopezians.  It worked.  We got several new members.  It also was a lot of fun.
Alpaca

Navajo Sheep with four horns

Shearing a Sheep

And the very next weekend, my friend Liz and I met on Orcas for our annual spa day, this time at Rosaria Resort Spa.  We enjoyed a lovely day there and ate at Allium Restaurant, a foody place in Eastsound.

The next day, as we were leaving Thornbush to take a walk at Jakles Lagoon, we chanced upon this barred owl near our pond.  There's really no place like home.