Puget Sound

Although now three weeks ago, we had a nice mini-vacation to the San Juan Islands - north of Seattle. My friend, Peter, got married on Orcas Island. In addition to the wedding, we took a car tour of the island, drove to the top of Mount Constitution which had great views of the Puget Sound, Vancouver and the other San Juan Islands, and went on a whale watch.

We had some time to kill between our arrival at SEA-TAC and our flight out to Orcas. We grabbed a cab and spent a couple hours in Seattle's Public Market at Pike's Place.


We arrived in Orcas on a small 9-seat plane. It was a pretty incredible trip in.





Our whale watch was somewhat spontaneous. Because we couldn't get off the island when we originally intended, we had an extra day on our hands. Some whale watching ships have 40-60 people. Our small boat had 7. It was a nice set up.

Before catching the transient Orca whales, we surprised some seals.


There was a pack of five Orcas that we followed for close to an hour and a half.








Since the whales were spotted early in the day, a number of boats were on their trail.


Finally, on the way home we drove past a nature preserve island which had a large collection of American Bald Eagles. It was quite a site.