James Island, James, and the raccoons

We brought out our lovely kayaks last weekend for an overnight paddle. It is real tough living right by the San Juan Islands. Sometimes we have to pinch ourselves that we live by such an awesome playground! Each weekend we try to take advantage of this unique place, but it doesn't always happen. Last weekend it did though and we headed out on a paddle to James Island. Every time we take a ferry to one of the islands in the San Juans, we stare at James Island. It is a state park, it has campsites designated for paddlers only, and it looked like a gem to us. Finally, we decided to go for it!



It was a short paddle from Lopez Island (our launch spot) to James Island - only about four miles. It was a gorgeous paddle though - with views of Decatur Island, the iconic WA ferries, and their wakes.... The minute we arrived on the kayaker-only beach and campsite at James Island, my very own James (Jay) had his shirt off for some much needed Vitamin D. The beach was protected from the wind that blasted through the other campsite on the island and was HOT. It was awesome. Note that I'm even wearing shorts! Wow.


We had a lovely evening cooking dinner (you can see Jay cooking in this image) on the beach and enjoying the sunset. A late evening walk brought us right under a tree with a bald eagle chillin' and doing its thang. We also saw tons of deer - no predators on this island!


And then we finally headed to bed....or so we thought. Shortly after dozing off in my warm bag, I heard a loud shriek and scream. I bolted up in my sleeping bag - what the heck!?? Jay remained half asleep - clearly not in defense mode. More screams. I managed to get Jay to move and we poked our heads outside the tent with our headlamps. Raccoons. They were everywhere and they were fighting with each other. I had no idea they were capable of producing such blood-curdling screams in my life. If we didn't know it was just a raccoon, I might have been terrified. It didn't take us long to realize that we might not be getting much sleep tonight. My favorite memory of this not-so-great night was Jay running around in boxer shorts and sneakers throwing anything he could find at the little bastards in the trees. Many rocks, branches, twigs, etc. were thrown. Princess Julie would come out with her defender Jay, but always retreated to the tent and sleeping bag quickly because she was cold. Eventually the fight was won by the raccoons. They couldn't get to our food in the kayaks (we had carefully stowed and flipped the kayaks) but they could fight right over our heads. And fight they did. The whole night. Despite the heroic efforts of Jay.

I'm not sure when they decided to let us sleep - but it wasn't for very long. We had planned to get up early to paddle around Decatur Island and back to Lopez. We had a ferry to catch to meet my buddy David (from Antarctica) back at our house. But we slept through the time we would have needed to start that longer paddle thanks to the coons. So we had a quick breakie and took off on the short paddle back to Lopez Island.

On our way back we were treated to some views of scavengers in action. A dead deer on the beach had attracted a ton of bald eagles! They were everywhere. We tried to count and figured there were at least six - plus a bunch of buzzards. We didn't want to get too close and disturb the eagle that was happily chowing down, but I did manage to get these shots (cropped....we were not this close). Yummy.

Back in Anacortes, David (one of the SCINI pilots from Antarctica) came to visit for the night. It was great fun to have him here. We talked about international travel, drank some good beer, and ate a yummy Asian dinner. He had just gotten back from teaching engineering in Vietnam - so we had much to discuss. It is always lovely to have friends in your house.

More photos here: https://picasaweb.google.com/julie.barber1/June2011