Watch out Whistler, here come the Barbers (and a Dimond)!

Whistler is a fantastic place to visit in the winter or summer - and the forecast in Anacortes was crappy so it made complete sense to drive up north to Whistler where the sun was shining and it was 26 °C (it's Canada people, we can handle the metric system and not be silly Americans). These were probably the last warm days we were going to have until next year, so Jay and I were lapping it up. To add to the fantastic weather - we had fantastic guests! My parents were visiting! They have always come in the winter or spring in the past, so clear skies and mountain views have been rare for them but Whistler delivered the goods!

While the boys had some beer at the Whistler lodge way up high on the mountain, my mom and I took the chairlift to the top of Whistler Peak - the highest spot in the area. Look at the difference between me and my mom (and the rocky Olympic dude) and the photo of Jay with the rocky dude below! Winter versus summer! What a huge and neat difference eh?

Once we took in all the views possible from Whistler Peak we rode the lift back down to the lodge and had a yummy and messy lunch (homemade bruschetta) in the sun. We were not done riding the fun lifts yet though - you may have heard of the famous Peak 2 Peak gondola that connects the two mountains (Whistler and Blackcomb) together with the longest unsupported span of cable in the world. Riding the gondola is a blast, especially on a clear day when you have great views up and down the alley. So we took it across to Blackcomb and then back to Whistler with a stop on Blackcomb to marvel at more views. We even managed to get into one of the two glass bottom gondolas for the ride back - it wasn't as spooky as I thought it might be - it was actually really fun.

Once we made it over to Blackcomb we cooed like tourists at the cute marmots, ate some gelato, and took in the Blackcomb views. There wasn't much to do aside from have a beer and stare at the view, so we did just that.  =)

That evening we went out to a great restaurant in Whistler Village called Araxi. Jay and I discovered this place over the winter when we spent a weekend here and I drooled over the idea of going back. Lucky for me, it was one day before my birthday, so we decided to have our birthday dinner here. And what a great gift to have my parents with me for my birthday - it has been years since we were together for my birthday. Yummy. I'm posing with my goat cheese stuffed zucchini blossoms and smoked tomato basil soup. Ahhhh.

The next morning we headed into the village proper to check out the Olympic rings and stare at all the interesting people! We noticed quite the change in the crowd from the evening to the morning! The night we ate out at Araxi we must have seen a billion bachelorette parties with lots of boobs, butts, and tutus poking out from tiny dresses. I think we all stared a bit, but that might have been the point! Ha! The next morning we found a different village filled with quiet families, couples past their hangover days, and some sleepy tourists wandering around the village in the warm sun. It was lovely. On our way back south, we stopped at the Whistler Olympic Park which is where the nordic Olympic events were held. It is always neat to see ski jumps, but I must say that the ski jumps in Lake Placid, NY are far more impressive than these ski jumps were. Maybe I'm biased as a New Yorker??

Our arrival back in Washington was gray and soggy. I'm so glad we had the great weather we did in Whistler because it was crappy for the next few days in Anacortes. That said, our tradition of having a BBQ at Deception Pass State Park did not get rained out! In fact, we saw the most insane sunset ever that night. Wow. Good thing we managed to cook our food on the pathetic amount of coal we had because it was worth sticking around for this sunset.

Happy Deception Pass diners

I guess I just had to put one more sunset shot in. Need I say more? Who is visiting next??

 

The weather cleared up the day before my parents were supposed to leave. I took the day off and the three of us (Jay still had to work) headed out on a whale (orca) watch. My parents do not have the best luck with whale watches in Washington, but at least we saw something! One huge transient male orca. We had to steam for almost three hours into Canadian waters to find this one big guy, but it was a gorgeous day to be on the water with my parents so the steam was worth it. And we saw lots of common murres, a gorgeous little seabird.

 T2, the big male, approaching a small whale watching boat from Victoria, Canada

 Orcas are not actually whales by the way....they are the largest dolphin. I wish they would call these "dolphin watches" to avoid confusion, but I guess "whale" sounds more impressive eh?

 The evening light coming back into Anacortes was stunning on all the fishing vessels. 

There is an awesome new rooftop bar in Anacortes that has great beer and cocktails at reasonable prices (forget the wine, you have to be a millionaire!) You can take in the view of our entire awesome town and all the islands. What a great new place! Now everyone has to come and visit again so we can take you here too. Who is next?? Jay's father and Charlotte!!??

More photos here halfway down the album: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/September2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6V-viG8OuUCg

Octopus Islands Marine Provincial Park, B.C.

Long weekends = long paddles in British Columbia! We hopped on a ferry right in our awesome hometown of Anacortes and wandered over to Sidney, on Vancouver Island. From there we drove north to Campbell River, took a ferry to Quadra Island, and paddled north up Hoskyn Channel to Octopus Islands Marine Provincial Park. The weather was warm, the wind was minimal, the water was almost gin-clear (nothing really compares to Antarctic water), and the tides were typically with us most of the way. Paddling gets no sweeter.

Only about five minutes into paddling north, we hit a thick patch of moon jellies (Aurelia sp.). Jay thought he was looking at the bottom at first until he realized the bottom was 100 ft. down and that his "bottom" was moving! I didn't get any amazing shots, this is the best one, but you can still get the idea of how dense this population was. It is fairly well known in the scientific world that jellyfish populations are on the rise with overfishing as one of the primary reasons. Have you downloaded your Monterey Bay Seafood Watch List  or app lately to make sure you are a wise seafood consumer? Otherwise expect more of this in the future!

Octopus Islands Marine Provincial Park is accessible from three inlets and all these entrances have marine rapids. What the heck does that mean? The entrance/exit point for this body of water is surrounded by narrow and shallow inlets and when the tide changes the massive amount of water flowing through the inlet creates "rapids". The word "rapid" is something to avoid if you are not wearing a kayaking drysuit or helmet...so we had to make sure we hit the tides at slack when there were no rapids. We arrived at Surge Narrows Provincial Park just in time for the slack tide and we paddled through without so much as a ripple on the water. Heading northwest, we passed through gorgeous kelp forests that seemed suspended in the air because the water was so clear. Jay and I were identifying fishes, urchins, kelps, and other algae throughout our paddle. The water was so clear that I kept forgetting to look up at the landscape! When I finally did look above the water I saw a beautiful body of water that looked like mercury because of lack of wind and saw a few harbor porpoises coming up here and there around our boats. Sweet little animals! You can hear them before you see them because of the little "poof" sound they make when they surface to breathe. And what would a paddle be without lots of harbor seals making tons of farting noises and snorting sounds at one another on the rocks? Kayaking not only gets you close to the water, but it gets you very close to the sounds of nature that you can't hear from a motorized vessel.

We found the sweetest spot to camp in the world! This little dot of an island had perfect rocks for cooking and lazing about - as well as a relatively flat spot for a tent. If you look carefully (or click on the photo to enlarge it) you can see our tent and me, lounging on the rocks planning our next big vacation to Madagascar this November! In the evening, Jay and I watched quillback rockfish wander around the kelp forest while we sat on the rocks and enjoyed the sunshine. For dinner we had a fantastic pinot noir with homemade nettle pesto & fresh tomato on pasta. For good reasons, we toasted my cousin Troy's wife, Lisa.... she deserved a toast on a night like this! That evening, the bioluminescence on the water was unreal. We walked down to the water's edge and watched the diatoms flicker as the current disturbed them, making them produce their greenish light all around the edge of this little island. Stars in the water and stars above in the clear black sky. Gorgeous.

We woke in the morning to fog burning off from the sun's attempts to reach through to the water. Jay snoozed while I took photograph after photograph of the changing moods of the fog. This is a color photo, but I love it because it looks like it is black and white.

We wanted to spend one more night on our perfect little island, but the ferry schedule on Monday and the slack tide timing for Surge Narrows did not line up. Sadly, we packed up and paddled off to explore the Octopus Islands and then head through Surge Narrows at slack in the late afternoon. I love paddling through narrow passages that get shallow....that is exactly what we are about to do in this photo above.

We stopped for lunch on a really tiny island where we could hear the rapids running from one of the other inlets to the north. Jay is checking out the urchin barren below us in the water - this means that there were a TON of sea urchins who chowed on all the algae leaving nothing behind but bare rock and a few sea stars.

We fought against the wind and paddled hard to make it to Surge Narrows in time for the slack tide - making it there just in time for an easy crossing. We camped on Peck Island right by the rapids....but our kayaks were stored in a strategic spot where we could launch from the island even with the rapids running and completely avoid them. It was fun to watch the tide go down at night and listen to the rapids run throughout the night.

In the morning we woke to a super low tide that gave Jay a chance to drool over all the massive clones of anemones (his favorite organism) in the intertidal. I love this photograph because it reminds me of fireworks, except these anemones are far more gorgeous. We had to leave the low tide early and push off to start our long paddle back to Quadra Island. We had a ferry to catch back to the mainland of Vancouver Island....

Our paddle back was great - tide with us and wind at our back! No complaints there! The only problem was that we didn't make the 1pm ferry from Quadra to Campbell River....everyone apparently wanted off Quadra at the same time. We made it onto the 2pm ferry and spent a lot of time biting our nails because we had to be back in Sidney at 5pm to make the last ferry back to Anacortes. It is a solid three hour drive back to Sidney from Campbell River. Eke. Let's just say that this was the most stressful part of the trip! We drove a wee-bit fast, with kayaks on top of our car, and managed to be the LAST car on the ferry back to Washington. Thank goodness Canadians are more aggressive drivers than Washingtonians, had this been WA we never would have made the ferry! Back in Washington, safe at home with fluffy kitties, we unloaded lots of soggy gear and slept very well in our own bed. Trips don't get any better than this. What a life we lead!

More photos here: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/September2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6V-viG8OuUCg

This kayaking trip was taken over the long weekend to celebrate our wedding anniversary. What a party! As you can see, Jay and Julie retain their individual styles, even at their own wedding. Julie = goofy (and wrapped in a sari thanks to pal Mike) while Jay pulls off the tie-on-head breakdancing moves. Yeow!

Happy four years (or 10.5 if you count the years we "bunked" together as my grandma called it).

Washington wines and fun

Benson Vineyards Estate Winery

Our visit with Jay's mother, Allison, was far too much fun! We scooped her up from the airport and headed straight to Leavenworth, WA for a weekend of wine tasting east of the Cascades! We woke up to a gorgeous, hot, dry, sunny day in Leavenworth. I immediately put on a dress, not something I really get to do often in Anacortes, and we took off for the wine country around Lake Chelan. One of my co-workers really knows his wine and he had been tasting around Chelan last year, so we got a wine map out, took all his recommendations, and spent the day wandering around the lake tasting wine and eating the fruits (peaches!) of eastern Washington.

Here we are tasting at Hard Row to Hoe Vineyards. Curious about the name? Here is a quote from their website: "Our name celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of a man who ran a row boat taxi service on Lake Chelan in the 1930's ferrying miners by rowboat to a brothel located at Point Lovely." You can read the whole story here: http://hardrow.com/about-our-name_323.html. While all the places we went to had great wine, this place had great wine and a great atmosphere. See the wallpaper behind us? Go to my photo link at the end of this blog to see what that is all about, I promise you that you will not be disappointed. We walked out of this winery with a sparkling wine called "Good in Bed" and a red called "Seduction". Great names! We were thinking of having the "Good in Bed" tomorrow for our wedding anniversary. Hee hee.

Benson Vineyards was the only winery we went to in Chelan that had 100% estate wines (many of the other wineries had both estate wines and wines made from grapes sourced elsewhere in WA). I always find it fun to be around vineyards because it reminds me of the two months that Jay and I spent working on a vineyard in New Zealand when we were traveling around the country. We know how hard people work to baby those grapes, so we really appreciate a good wine when we get it.

The next day we decided to drive west of the Cascades (on our way home) and stop in Woodinville, WA to try some wines in this town. The tastings did not disappoint - we were blown away by the wines from Brian Carter Cellars and very impressed with the wines at Alexandria Nicole Cellars. Needless to say, I'm already scheming ways to get back there so I can buy even more wines.

Allison wasn't happy about our haul of wine at all. 

The only sad part about our visit with Allison is that both Jay and I had to work during the week. But we made up for the lost time at night with gourmet dinners and, you guessed it, amazing wines! To recap some of the meals the non-veggos had....steak with a wine/morel sauce, a side of our farmshare fresh broccoli, and our backyard-grown salad. Halibut with a lime-garlic butter sauce and backyard salad. Indonesian seafood curry made with sockeye salmon and an Indonesian eggplant sambal. Locally-grown mushrooms made into a bruschetta with apple slices, sherry, and mascarpone cheese on top of garlic-rubbed rustic bread. The list goes on, but need I say more? I think we eat pretty well at our house.....

As most of you know, I work four 10-hr days, so I have my Fridays off. Allison and I had a great swim and then we headed to the fun town of Edison to grab lunch at the fabulous Tweets Cafe and to pick blueberries at Bow Hill Blueberries.That night we made blueberry ice cream and in the morning we enjoyed blueberry muffins made with lots of butter, teff flour, and yogurt. Ahhhh....summer.

Rosé and hors d'oeuvres

We spent our last full day together wandering around Anacortes at the Farmers Market and then at the town's port building where we watched the fun Work Boat Races. One of the huge tugs pulled a super fast 360 in front of the crowd and crossed the finish line backwards. I was impressed. We spent the last day of Allison's visit at Deception Pass State Park (a requirement of any visit!) before taking her back to the airport for a sad farewell. Greeting family when they arrive is fantastic, but sending them off to the east coast while we stay behind just sucks. We miss her already.

On a different note, the weekend before Allison arrived we went for a short overnight paddle to Saddlebag Island. Saddlebag is actually quite close to Anacortes - so we spent the day at the Anacortes Arts Festival, then we launched our boats and paddled to the island, arriving just in time to make dinner. We had visited this island in the past on a day paddle and admired the camping spots. It was a great place to camp, but sadly our view ended up being the yucky oil refinery. So we are not sure we will return again, but it was nice to get out for a fast overnight right from our house.

 I'm still in love with my tent after all these years.

Jay brought clams out with him for his dinner. I have no interest in eating bivalves but I thought it was neat he ate them on a camping trip. Good man and great choice in sustainable seafood.

Photos are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/August2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfmgLbzpriztwE

There is so much more to write about! Stay tuned as I try to keep up with the blogs about our fun times in the Pacific Northwest. We love it!