{28june2011: weekend road trip part 1}

A few weekends ago we took a weekend trip up to Orcas Island for our friends wedding. (If you ever get a chance to visit Seattle, plan to give yourself a couple days to go up to the San Juan Islands, it's amazingly laid back and relaxing.)
To get to Orcas Island (or any of the San Juan islands) it's about an hour and a half drive north from Seattle to Anacortes where you get on an hour ferry ride to get to the island. The ferries to the islands can get really crowded, especially in the summer, so it's best to get there early.

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We took that advice and got up very early on a Friday (430am early - oi) so we could get to the ferry by 630am to get on the 730am ferry.
{is the ferry here yet?!}

We slept in the car as we waited for the ferry then slept the whole ferry ride over to Orcas island. Of course we got there so early (830am) that nothing was really open so we decided to head over to Moran State Park and do a little hiking. We were a little hesitant about a very serious hike (aka Jason's epic hike because a few days earlier I had fallen walking Darwin and sprained my ankle (no she didn't pull me, I just was walking and fell. ahahaha) and Jason was feeling a little under the weather so we thought we'd do something easy, so we opted for a mostly flat hike around Mountain Lake.

Of course as soon as Darwin saw the lake she had to bless it.

The hike around the lake was beautiful and so peaceful. We saw one other couple and their dog during the whole four mile loop.

After walking around the lake we made it back to the car and had a breakfast picnic on a bench next to the lake. Once we finished eating a bit (we didn't want to eat too much as we wanted to try Passionate for Pies in Eastsound) we started to pack up the car so we could drive to the top of Mount Constitution to check out the stone tower. Darwin was not ready to leave yet and would not come near us so we could leash her and stayed by the picnic table.

For a good 10 minutes she ran around keeping a good distance between us and her letting us know she did not want to go. I finally lured her back to me with a piece of salami (I was a bad dog mom and forgot to bring her treats) and we loaded her up and drove to the top of the mountain.
Of course we had to pop into the gift shop.

After picking up a few postcards we walked up a little hill to the stone tower.

Jason still wasn't feeling 100% so I went up the tower to check out the view while he hung out with Darwin on the bottom.

The tower isn't very tall, but from the top of it you can see almost all of Orcas Island and its surrounding islands and the surrounding mountains (they say on a clear day you can see down to Mount Rainer). It wasn't very clear while I was up there, but it was still an awesome view.
What I did see though were a couple of kids loving on Darwin, all while she kept her eyes on me.

By then I was hungry for pies so we headed to Eastsound (the main town on Orcas) and hunted down the pie shop. I love that they carry sweet and savory pies. We both tried a savory pie while Darwin watched us. hehehe

Of course since we were on vacation we had to let Darwin have a treat too and we found Lily, a little ice cream shop . Darwin, the spoiled girl she is got her own scoop of vanilla.

Since we were bad dog parents and didn't come totally prepared we stopped at the pet store, Pawki's to find some treats for Dar (always good to have treats on us for training).

Stay tuned for part 2 which will show the great little farm we stayed at!