Ferry to San Juan Island

Sunday 22 September
Today we took a fairly early ferry to San Juan Island for the day. It’s a sizeable island, so we would have taken the car, but unfortunately we couldn’t have got a return ferry until about 10 pm, so instead, we went on as foot passengers, and fortunately it was the last day of the shuttle bus that they run during the summer months. The San Juan islands are an archipelago between the state of Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, consisting of 172 named islands, though some are pretty small. The three largest are Orcas, the hilliest, Lopez and San Juan.
The first shuttle didn’t leave for another 30-40 minutes or so, which gave us enough time to get a coffee and a salmon bagel as an early lunch. Our first stop on the shuttle was Lime Kiln state park, with its lighthouse and sea views, and it's also a great spot for watching Orca whales, however we weren’t in luck today. We then continued to Westcott Bay sculpture park, see extra, featuring about 100 sculptures set amongst nature. At this point, we split up. Liam wanted to visit the island distillery, which makes small batch ciders and spirits, so they chose to walk there, whilst we continued with the shuttle to English Camp. When Great Britain and the United States in 1859 agreed to jointly occupy San Juan island, they decided their camps should be on opposite ends of the island, with the British at the north end of the island, where a few buildings, a formal garden and a cemetery remain, as well as pleasant walks along Garrison Bay. We met up with Laura and Liam on the last shuttle back to Friday Harbor. The shuttle driver was quite a character, and a lot of fun, and shared some of his knowledge of the island. Back in Friday Harbor, we had some time to pass before the next ferry, so we treated ourselves to an ice cream, then had a walk around the small town, looking in the few shops that were open, being a Sunday.
My collage shows top left the scene waiting for the ferry in the morning, and the rest scenes from the rest of the approximately one hour long ferry ride, illustrating the changing light conditions.