2006-07-02 The Journey 2006-07-03 Orcas Island 2006-07-04 Orcas Island to Victoria 2006-07-05 Victoria to Olympic NP 2006-07-06 Olympic NP 2006-07-07 Olympic NP to Seattle 2006-07-08 Seattle CVS

Day 3 - Tuesday, July 4, 2006

I stirred from another relatively sound sleep, primarily the result of the 13-mile hike the day before.  My body was still more or less on Central Time, and that, combined with the early sunrise, made it hard to sleep much past 6:00.  This worked out pretty well, though, since I needed to be packed and ready to go by 7:00 anyhow.  This time, packing my luggage was not in vain, for today we'd be bidding farewell to Orcas Island and heading west by ferry to San Juan Island, and then to Vancouver Island for a layover in historic Victoria, BC.

We fixed our lunches from the gourmet deli spread, ate breakfast at Rosario again, loaded the van, and drove around the island to the village of Orcas, where we had an hour or so to look around and shop for trinkets before boarding the 9:45 ferry to San Juan Island.  The short ferry ride put us in Friday Harbor a little after 11 AM, just in time to become a float in the Fourth of July parade.  It took us 15 or 20 minutes to reach escape velocity and get out of town.  Our destination was the San Juan Island National Historic Park and, more specifically, the summit of Young Hill.

San Juan Island is one of the drier islands in the chain, and the interior of it really looks a lot like southern Colorado or northern New Mexico.  It rivals Orcas in area but not in elevation.  At 1090 feet ASL, the privately-owned Mt. Dallas is the tallest peak on SJI.  San Juan Island's primary claim to fame was as the center of a boundary dispute between the British and the Americans during the mid 19th Century.  Both the U.S. and Great Britain claimed ownership of the San Juan Islands at that time, due to ambiguities in the language of the Oregon Treaty, and both countries allowed their citizens to settle on the islands.  No problems arose from this until 1859, when an American homestead farmer on San Juan Island shot a pig that had been rooting in his garden, a pig that belonged to an Irish employee of the Hudson's Bay Company.  The farmer offered $10 compensation for the pig, but the owner wasn't satisfied and demanded $100.  The farmer refused to pay, and the British threatened to arrest him.  He and the other American settlers called for military protection, which led to a build-up of forces that historians would call the "Pig War", primarily because the pig was the only casualty in it.  Ultimately, no shots were fired, both sides realized how silly the squabble was, and they agreed to reduce their occupation to a token force.  The British and Americans co-existed peacefully on opposite sides of San Juan Island until 1872, when binding arbitration ruled it and the rest of the San Juans to be part of the United States.

The San Juan Island National Historic Park encompasses both the British camp on the north side of the island and the American camp on the southern tip.  Young Hill, a 650-foot summit in the British Camp section of the park, is the highest point between the park and the sea and thus offers some nice panoramic views of Westcott Bay and Roche Harbor to the north and Vancouver Island across the Haro Strait to the west.  We hiked up the short trail to the summit and enjoyed a sandwich and the views.

Returning to the van, we drove back around to Friday Harbor and spent an hour or so wandering around aimlessly, shopping, taking photos, etc.  I got bored with the shops pretty quickly and ended up in the Whale Museum, which was a pretty good way to kill five minutes.  I also had a positively sinful mango milkshake from the Sweet Retreat, although afterward I found myself wishing I had hiked a few more miles that morning.

We boarded the 3:50 ferry for Sidney, BC and arrived on Vancouver Island just in time for rush hour.  Due to the traffic, it took us nearly an hour to get to our hotel, the luxurious Laurel Point Inn in downtown Victoria.  We were on our own for dinner that night, and the guides had given us a list of recommended restaurants.  Yet somehow, splitting up in different directions, in a city of 300,000 people, five of us managed to end up at the same restaurant (Cafe' Brio.)  I had the halibut.