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The Daily Bucket - to San Juan island and back [1]
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Date: 2025-01-21
January 14, 2025
Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
My bucket today is part transportation, part nature, part sculpture with a J pod orca report, from a trip over to a neighboring island last week for an eye doctor appt. This wasn’t a wildlife watching trip per se so my photos and the video are all using my phone. We took the interisland boat which, as the schedule would have it, did all stops, both ways, meaning an hour and a half each direction, not counting waiting in line. But that’s ok. You get meditative watching the islands go by. We could have walked on different ferries, with less boat time, but that would mean more downtime in Friday Harbor, and it was a cold day, so I opted for going by car. I’m getting old.
Interisland run goes back and forth between the 4 ferry-served islands. The 3 other boats up here carry traffic to and from the mainland.
The way ferry workers load vehicles if you’re doing all stops from one end of the route to the other is they send you all the way to the end of the car deck, you circle back around, and return to the end currently tied up at the dock, so you’re facing the right way for offloading at your final destination. The alternative is to back onto the boat, which they will have you do if you’re getting off at one of the islands on a boat heading all the way to the mainland (that traffic takes priority) (although I notice with the newly revamped schedule they don’t allow interisland cars on most of the mainland boats anymore — perhaps as a way to speed up loading). That can be a bit hairy, especially for semi trucks and trailers. If you’re lucky your trip on the interisland boat might be direct, skipping the two stops in between, but the timing of our excursion meant we couldn’t take advantage of that.
We did have a little downtime after my appointment so we went over to a beach near town to eat our lunch. I checked out the birds. That’s the nature part of this bucket lol.
First, a few ferry scenes, after we departed, and arrival in Friday Harbor, the town on San Juan.
Departing Lopez. Note we’re facing backward in our car.
After stopping at Shaw and Orcas we arrived in FH right after one of the bigger boats had docked so the interisland tied up to the auxiliary dock. Only foot passengers can load and unload there, which they did, along with many crew, it being a shift change. The pedestrian ramp gets lowered to the ferry deck once we tie up.
The MV Yakima having departed, our boat backed up and moved to the adjacent main dock, where the car ramp will be lowered.
After my appointment we drove over to Jackson Beach, which is owned by the Port of Friday Harbor, hence valuable public access (public beaches are few in the San Juans). It’s essentially a spit with a lagoon one one side, a boat ramp at the end, and a beach with lots of driftwood facing the open water.
For some reason most of the driftwood is small stuff, but there are enough driftwood logs to be a bit hazardous if your footing is unsure. We saw a couple of kids emerge from the water after taking a dip. This is mainly a beach frequented by locals, and entirely so at this time of year.
In the lagoon there were a couple of Pied Bill grebes, which I see rarely in my local bays
Flock of Mew (Short-billed) gulls chillin. There were also Red-breasted mergansers, Olympics gulls, a GBH, a kingfisher, and a variety of small terrestrial birds like sparrows.
A bunch of buffies of course. This drake was feeling his mojo.
Reflections, mirages, and lots of floating wood on the water. With the recent full moon the tides had been especially high, floating beach wood up and out to sea.
Mirages are a winter feature, when the air is colder than the water (which stays in the mid-high 40s year round).
Being a park, there were many crows scrounging for snacks.
There’s a totem pole at the park donated by the Lummi Nation’s House of Tears carvers. They have created a number of carvings to draw attention to Northwest environmental and indigenous issues. This one represents the threats to our Southern Resident orca population. It was created in 2018 to raise awareness about the long captivity of Tokitae in a small concrete tank in Florida, who sadly died in 2023 before she could be freed. Tokitae was stolen from her family not far from here (Penn Cove, Whidbey island) in 1970.
The totem pole includes a tribute to Tahlequah (J35) whose newborn daughter died in 2018 and whose extraordinary effort in carrying her dead child for 17 days throughout the Salish Sea drew attention worldwide to the critical plight of our local resident orca population. Tahlequah at age only 26 has been the matriarch of her small clan since her mother died in 2019.
Southern Resident killer whale J35 (also called Tahlequah), was observed on Jan. 1 carrying a newly dead newborn calf. Orca's 'grief procession' for dead calf marks 11th day in Victoria waters
Tahlequah suffered another blow on or a few days before December 31 when her second female baby also died shortly after birth. As of last week she’d been carrying that baby for nearly two weeks. There have been no new observations of J pod families since then. Now that the local fall chum and coho runs are over, the orcas have likely headed out to the open ocean for food.
As a result of starvation, pollution and other threats, these days 70% of potential new members of the SRKW population die either from miscarriage or soon after birth. Tahlequah does has two living children, born in 2010 and 2020, both sons. However for any chance of population recovery the Southern Residents need living daughters.
Totem pole honoring Tokitae and Tahlequah,created by Lummi Nation carvers and donated to this site in 2023
After wandering around Jackson’s and having our lunch we headed back to the ferry dock for our trip home.
Loading onto MV Sealth, the interisland boat these days
I took my walk that day around the boat to get some exercise. When we docked at Orcas I watched vehicles loading, including the septic pumper truck from Lopez. Even though we are a smaller island, the guy who runs that business has a well deserved great reputation. All the traffic on the boat was locals going to work or taking care of business, and then home. That’s typical for the interisland, even in the summer tourist season.
Here’s a 1:48 minute video of some clips I took on the ferry that might interest folks who live inland. The first clip is departure from our home dock, the rest are on our return trip: loading at Friday Harbor and the stop at Orcas.
Shaw island is one of the four ferry-served islands and has by far the least traffic. Shaw has no town. The blue building is a general store, and was run for many years by Benedictine nuns, who also ran the ferry dock. Their monastery is nearby.
After departing Shaw I had to hustle back down to the car deck since it’s a very short distance from Shaw to Lopez.
Any time islanders have to go off island it’s an all day trip, no matter how brief what you’re traveling for. In my case, a 20 minute appointment required 8 hours away from home. That’s part of the deal to live in the islands. To true islanders it’s worth it. A bridge or tunnel would completely destroy the atmosphere and quality of life out here.
Sunset as we drove down the island. It’s always a joy to come home.
🌎
Cold weather in the Pacific Northwest islands, near freezing. Not as cold as elsewhere in the country though! Some sun and fairly calm here this morning.
What’s up in nature in your neighborhood?
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