Exploring We Go

We're off to the Grand Canyon. My backpack is down to 18 lbs of essentials. Sleeping bag and pad, bathing suits, hiking shorts and pants, shoes and sandals, a few toiletries, binoculars, camera, etc. We'll spend five days rafting the upper part of the Canyon, from Lee's Ferry to Phantom Ranch. We'll then spend the better part of one day hiking out - nearly 10 miles, all uphill. The last few days we'll spend with friends in Phoenix. I'm so excited. I've wanted to do this forever. We'll be back on Labor Day (aka Jeff's birthday), and I'll hopefully have photos up soon after that. Have a great week and a half!

Just Our Luck

Of course this would be the weekend we're flying. Jeff and I were going to be in Louisville for all of 32 hours. All we needed was a change of clothes, a bathing suit, and toiletries. Perfect carry-on luggage. But not now. Now we're avoiding carrying on anything but our essentials in the hopes that we pass through security without too much issue. And I don't think our habit of showing up an hour to forty-five minutes before our flight is going to work this weekend. Guess it's a good thing that we didn't change our flight from the Sunday night flight to the Monday morning flight. That would have been really early. Oh well. So it goes. We'll just grin and bear it because there isn't a darn thing we can do about it.

My Thoughts in Print

I recommend you visit the Washington Post to read the essay I wrote which appeared in today's paper. There's even a photo of me accompanying it.

Photos from the San Juan Islands

Hotel at Roche Harbor. Roche Harbor is on the opposite side of San Juan island from the ferry docks and is where many private boats dock. The hotel is historic and rather picturesque with beautiful gardens in front and a nice view of the water and the insane yachts harbored there.


Gardens at Roche Harbor


This is a small Catholic church perched up on a rocky crag next to the hotel. Very quaint.


Westcott Bay Sculpture Park. Jeff and I making silly faces into one of the sculptures. There were a lot of sculptures spread out over five acres, and it was really nice to wander around.


Lighthouse at Lime Kiln Park. The park is one of the best places for spotting Orcas from land. We didn't see any while we were at the park, but we did see a pod of porpoises and this lovely lighthouse.


Pelindaba Lavender Farms. The fields were just pure purple (and buzzing because of all the bees).


Jeff skipping rocks at South Beach. We were looking for whales again, but no luck.


But then later on while driving along the coast, we spotted a huge pod of orcas right off shore. We could hear them blow, and we spent about half an hour watching them jump and show off. (Yes, it would be nice if we had better zoom, but at full size, you can definitely see this whale jumping.)


In the evening, we went on a sunset kayak tour. We saw a seal, a bald eagle, and a large buck up on land. We also kayaked through a huge kelp garden and past some insane houses. The sunset was very nice. And as we were leaving, we saw two red foxes.


The San Juans are a beautiful place. This is the view from atop Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island.