Vancouver and the San Juan Islands

As usual, I am way behind. I was all excited to sit down and finally blog about Portland, when I realized I never talked about Vancouver, B.C. and the San Juan Islands. So, here we are.   

Vancouver was alright. After having just come from Seattle, it was a little disappointing. To be fair, Sam and I were both crazy busy with work, and completely spaced on the fact that our mobile hotspot was going to incur roaming charges, so we got up super early every day and went hopping from hotspot to hotspot all over the city. And we couldn’t use our phones unless we had wifi. No problem when truly vacationing in another country… less cool when you’re working. We ultimately decided we would have to come back another time, when we have more time to go exploring and aren’t working the whole time.

That being said, real Canadian poutine is a revelation! Don’t trust these American restaurants slapping mozzarella on some fries and calling it poutine. Fries + dark, brown gravy (frequently made mostly from meat drippings) + CHEESE CURDS. For those of you who are unfamiliar with cheese curds, as I was, they are big glops of this white, stringy cheese that go perfectly with the flavor intensity of the gravy. We ate it every day we were there.

I found the differences in Border Patrol to be amusing. Getting into Canada, there was maybe a 15-20 minute wait, and the woman was super friendly until finally getting serious and making sure we didn’t have any guns. “It’s a very serious offense in Canada, guys, if you’re packing and a cop pulls you over, you will go to prison for a federal offense.” Still friendly, but Canada’s main thing was guns. To get back into America, we waited a hour, hour and a half, there were very scary looking guards with drug dogs running around (think Hank from Breaking Bad), and yet when we got to the booth with the angry looking American man, we were grilled on whether we were carrying any produce. I do understand the produce issue, but still. No questions about guns, or drugs, or stow-aways, just… vegetables. Priorities, guys, priorities. :)

At the suggestion of some friends in Seattle, we cut our Vancouver trip short and spent the weekend on the San Juan Islands. Unfortunately, we totally spaced on the fact that it was Labor Day weekend, and almost didn’t get a place to camp, but luckily came across a state park that had a few first-come-first-served camping spots, and it was a Thursday. We had a cozy little spot tucked in the woods next to a lake, so no complaints here! It would have cost $200 to ferry Voltron to the islands, so we camped on the mainland and took the ferry out each day.


The first day we went to Orcas Island, which was much less crowded and generally less inhabited. We took a shuttle around to the small town, which had a farmers/craft market going on, and eventually ended up going for a beautiful hike. The second day, we stopped by a fantastic lavender farm (that my friend Chris would have loved), and then went kayaking for the very first time! It was bay/straight kayaking, so less maneuvering through white water, and more relaxing and beautiful, despite having to paddle the whole time. We got to see seals, tons of jelly fish and a bald eagle! It was awesome! We ended the evening with a drive to the west side of the island to watch the sunset. Just beautiful.

So then we headed to Portland, where we are now, and I can’t wait to tell you about it! Stay tuned!