Disclaimer: This post is one of those that ended up being written years after the experience was had. Sadly, there were no notes taken so whatever is shared here must be extracted from the images and what memories they may have lent us. Fortunately, there was an itinerary still in my directory of travel plans, so that will help with some details. As to why this wasn’t noted or blogged about, I was in the throes of writing/editing my book Stay In The Magic and felt that any other deep writing would derail that fragile effort.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that we were staying in Arlington to position ourselves for a big adventure. We needed to be in Anacortes by 9:00 a.m. sharp and so with the four of us needing to coordinate showers and breakfast, I wanted to be close enough to our destination that we wouldn’t be late.

Today’s kayak trip was taking across a bay over to Burrows Island.

There were no photos of us crossing the bay as my camera was in a waterproof bag, but as soon as we were sitting in a shadow on very calm water, I was able to bring it out and snap a couple of under-exposed images.

While we are accustomed to seeing jellyfish in aquariums and dead on the shore, it’s not very often we see them alive in their natural habitat. Had this been a Portuguese man o’ war, I would have been worried as that would mean we had somehow arrived in the Atlantic Ocean, and well, that would have been pretty strange.

From snowshoes, Seadoos, bicycles, rafts, ferries, and kayaks, Caroline and I are having the times of our lives as we get to travel through our environments by all manner of craft and by foot as we invest in these experiences. All it has taken is a strong commitment and the occasional taking on some debt for these important explorations of pushing ourselves further than we might have imagined.

Writing this part of my recollections, I can’t help but be critical and wish that we’d been doing this kayaking thing far more often than we have. It had been just two years prior to this trip that Caroline and I first ventured out on the water in a kayak on the Atlantic coast, and then the very next day, we were over on the warm Gulf waters in the Florida Keys kayaking for our second time. Just one year prior had been our first encounter with the whitewater of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and now here we are, hoping we just might see orcas. Living in the desert doesn’t make finding this practice time any easier.

I can go ahead and tell you right now that we did not see a single orca today, but our guide spotted this skeleton shrimp in a clump of seaweed floating at the surface, and well, that was good enough for us, exciting even. It’s not every day that one finds themselves kayaking a stretch of the Pacific Ocean next to an island and just spots such a tiny creature. But why was this so “exciting?” This creature had just been discovered in the past year and here’s our guide just finding one like that! This makes us some of the first humans to see this species in the wild; I got my money’s worth.

I don’t know how we were gifted with perfect weather at Mt. Rainier yesterday, nor can I explain that we had a wonderfully calm ocean for our kayaking trip.

Out of Burrow Bay and onto Burrow Island for lunch.

A fourth-order Fresnel lens once sat in here, but in 1972 it was replaced with an automated system seen here.

The lighthouse went into operation in 1905.

Lucky for us, we’re not in a hurry to get back on the water and can just linger a while enjoying the sea…

… the nice weather and the view of my beautiful wife, it’s all so lovely out here.

It’s a rare day that we travel with others and while there can be issues of bumping us out of our isolation and needing to accommodate these fellow travelers, we’d like to believe it does us good to not always have everything our way.

On the southwest corner of the island, we got into some current that made us work hard to escape it. This very idea that the water could push and pull us where it wanted to take our kayak was unnerving for me as I started entertaining ideas that as we paddled against the flow, we’d roll out of the kayak, and I’d be in the water I didn’t want to encounter.

But here we are, back on land when this happened. As Kirk worked to get out of his kayak, a long, solid ripping sound was heard that left little to the imagination of what had occurred. Caroline ran to Kirk’s car to grab his overnight bag so he could change and repair the dignity that remained in his boat.

At over one hundred miles away, I’m struck that we can see Mt. Rainier in the distance. Or, is the earth really flat, and this 14,411-foot (2.7 miles / 4.4 kilometer) tall mountain is only visible because of the flatness? I quickly do the geometry in my puny head and realize that if that mountain were on that shore and stood almost 3 miles high, it would be a lot higher than what I’m seeing, so if it’s that short, it must be sitting on a curve that slopes out of view! Nah, the earth is flat.

Dinner was at a Thai restaurant, as we’d not learned yet that ethnic food in small towns never failed to let us down. Lodging was at the Acorn Motor Inn for $79, and upon checking their prices ten years later, it would only cost us $89 a night to stay again.