Being tourists and getting stuff done!

We had planned to stay an additional few days in this area at the La Conner Thousand Trails campground, but since we found that it has essentially non-existent Verizon service, we've elected to head further south from here tomorrow. As a result we decided to try to do those things that we possibly would have done from the La Conner campground today (it is only about half an hour away).

We headed to Anacortes, and first stopped at Cap Sante for an overlook of the area. This picture from 1925 shows the wood processing facilities that were there at that time. The information plaque indicated that the last mill on Fidalgo Bay succumbed to fire in 1992, ending that era in Anacortes.

The view is quite different today! There was a marina on the right that seemed to be largely commercial craft - another outside the picture to the left that was more pleasure boats.

We could see Mount Baker way in the distance...

Close up with my phone...

Closer up with Dwayne's camera's "normal" lens...

Closest up with Dwayne's camera's "long" lens!

 From there we drove to Washington Park, on the west side of Anacortes.

It was so beautiful and so peaceful.

The San Juan Islands are beyond this point.

So much to just see and ponder! Dwayne said he could have stayed there just looking for hours!

We saw the ferry leaving from Anacortes - the ferries from here go to the San Juan Islands and to Vancouver Island, in Canada.

Another overlook further up the Washington Park Loop Road - the island on the left is probably Burrows Island.

Around toward the south and east - Burrows Bay and here Burrows Island is on the right. Here Dwayne said that if we lived in this area he would want to have a boat! Maybe our next adventure? Nah... I don't think so!

From there we drove to Mt Erie Park... I had read that there were 360 degree views from this high point on the island.

Well... maybe there are views between the trees...

We walked a short way down to a lookout area where we could see Mount Baker in the distance.

There was another lookout area, but we had not stopped at it on the way up, and on the way down, the parking lot there was full - maybe it would have had really gorgeous views, but... we would probably recommend skipping Mt Erie if you are looking for views. It appeared to have quite a number of hiking trails, but we did not take advantage of any of those.

We kept on going south to Deception Pass. There is a state park there - we didn't really go in to the state park, just stopped along the road and took some pictures.

Bridge at Deception Pass

The waters were really churning at Deception Pass.

I read online that George Vancouver gave the pass the name of "Deception" because he had thought that Whidbey Island was a peninsula instead of an island.

We had arranged for some orders to be shipped to La Conner a couple of weeks ago because that was the last place we would be staying in this area. We then made another order (Amazon Prime) just this week to pick up a few things that we had wanted to get. The route that this order took to get to us seemed a bit odd:

Reading from the bottom, the order started in San Bernandino, CA, went to DFW, then the eastern side of Washington at Spokane, before getting to this area (Seattle, Redmond, Burlington) on its way to La Conner. When I first saw that it went to DFW, I thought I had selected an incorrect delivery address - but, I checked, and it was correct. I guess the shortest way from California to Washington State is through DFW...

From La Conner, we headed to a produce stand:

 RVing friends had told us about the SnowGoose Produce stand - I had thought they meant for fresh produce... but... they clarified that we should go there for ice cream!

You might think that looks larger than real life because Dwayne is holding it out in front, closer to the camera... but... it really was that big!!!

They also had large zucchini - the sign says "I love zucchini cause they're never very teeny!" We didn't get any Giant Zukes ($3/each), but we did get sweet corn and peaches, in addition to our ice cream cones!

Tomorrow our plan is to drive down to Chehalis. We've been told that it was the very first Thousand Trails campground. Not only is it a longer drive than the ones we've been doing recently (170-190 miles), we have to get by Seattle - we've heard that rush hour never ends near Seattle. So... could be a long and stressful day of driving tomorrow, but with God's help, hopefully we won't do any damage to any of God's property and arrive safely at the campground before too late in the day.