8-17-03: This year, when my parents came to visit, we decided to go up to the San Juans. At the time, though, we did not realize that the island ferry schedule was so tight, and we missed our ferry by a few minutes. We decided to spend the day in Anacortes instead. This is the view of the island within an island in Cranberry Lake (Anacortes, although connected to the mainland by bridges, is technically on Fidalgo Island) with a particularly clear view of some of the other San Juan islands beyond it. This shot was taken from a view point on Mount Constitution.

8-17-03: This sculpture of a hawk was at another lookout on Mount Constitution. It seems to be eying my dad in this picture.

8-17-03: From there, we went down to the shore to go beachcombing at the Cap Sante harbor. After a while I figured out that these things were barnacle-encrusted oysters.

8-17-03: I talked my parents into taking my picture while I climbed up this madrone tree. The picture is surprisingly steady, given that my mother was fretting over me falling out of the tree the entire time.

8-17-03: This harbor comes complete with harbor seals.

8-17-03: We happened across the Lady Washington, the ship used in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.

8-17-03: Taking a close look at the rigging, you can understand why sailors were so good at knots. I found touring the ship particularly fun, because it so happened that at this time our characters in our Dungeons and Dragons game were supposed to be sailing aboard a very similar ship. Ships like this are very small. Its hard to imagine spending months on end aboard a ship like this with 20 or 30 people on board, and enough supplies to keep them all fed and watered. Imagine living in your grade school class room for 3 or 4 months in a row.

8-17-03: They were selling rides on the Lady Washington, but we decided that we didn't really need to go. It was cool watching her sail, though. If you could, just for a moment, edit out the 50-star American flag, the buoys and ranch houses and water treatment plants....

8-17-03: ... you could almost imagine what this land must have been like when the galleons really did sail these waters. What must it have been like to step off of the ship into a world where the base of most trees were wider than your ship, the salmon ran in such numbers that you could walk across the Columbia river on their backs, and the land so gentle and generous that there were no poisonous snakes and only two poisonous species of berries?