10 Years

That's right, we celebrated our 10 year anniversary on Friday, August 1st. We actually left home on Thursday, July 31st and headed to La Conner to the Heron Inn and Watergrass Day Spa - a favorite place of ours.

We had planned to head from there to Whistler for 3 nights at the Pan Pacific Mountainside where we stayed on our honeymoon. Unfortunately, there was a large rock slide on the Sea to Sky Hwy between Vancouver and Whistler. SO....we had to cancel our reservations (or take a day long detour to get there which didn't seem very feasible for a weekend trip).

Any of you that have tried to get last minute reservations in the NW in July or August know that we were in a bit of a pickle. So, we ended up finding a camping spot at the Thousand Trails Resort in La Conner - even got to stay all 3 nights for free in exchange for listening to their 90 minute presentation about TT membership. They make a compelling case but we said "no thanks".

Since we were saving a small fortune on gas and hotel costs we scheduled massages and facials for both of us at the Watergrass Day Spa and went on a Whale Watching cruise from Friday Harbor. In spite of the last minute plan change and the fact that we were camping instead of staying in a 5 star resort...we had a LOVELY time and really enjoyed the break.

A special thanks goes to our wonderful neighbors Keith & Jessie that took fabulously good care of our baby Watson while we were away. He seems perfectly healthy at the moment - it's hard to believe that he has a ticking time bomb inside that could go off at any time. Oh well, we are enjoying the time we have left with him.

Here are some photos from our weekend.

Our Campsite at Thousand Trails:



Our cozy (new) tent:



Darin making breakfast:



Scenery from the Ferry between Anacortes and Friday Harbor:



Darin on the Odyssey (Whale watching boat):



Jean on the Odyssey (in my new hat!):



Whales - we saw LOTS of them - it was super amazing. We even saw one of them breach several times. The last photo gives you an idea of how close we got a couple of times...the heads in the foreground were fellow passengers standing just in front of us at the bow of the boat.





And, just for fun - here's a couple of photos we purchased from the tour operator of two of the whales we actually saw. The first one is of L-pod 57 "Faith", a large male that we saw several times. The second is a family portrait of a couple of J-pod whales: J-1 "Ruffles" is the adult male, his dorsal fin is nearly 6 feet tall and we saw him also. Males average life span is 30 years, however, Ruffles is over 50 years old. The other whale in this photo is J-2 "Granny" who is 97 and the matriarch of the J-pod family. Average female life span is 50 years so she is quite the old lady. We may have seen her also but not close enough to identify.





And - here's one of our dream boats spied in the Friday Harbor Marina (yes, we have several!):