Life in Seattle

It’s finally time for us to return home, so we packed our stuff and headed for the ferry terminal at around 10a.m. We stopped along one of the small towns for a short break:

This was found on the walls of a cafeteria in town; feels like those 70’s cafeteria, right? And btw, 99% of the pictures you’ve seen so far have been taken by the 2 ladies!

Us, in front of the Orcas Island Museum.

There were plenty of interesting stuff on sale too:

And lotsss of flowers grown by the locals!

This kind of flowers is native to Northwest only; I don’t know the name of the flowers though.

Lavender! Spotted the bee?

 

We reached the terminal at around 11a.m, and we had lots of free time to walk around before our ferry arrives:

 

A quick look around the ferry terminal at Orcas Island:

That’s the kind of ship we’ll be taking back home

 

Once up on the ship, we decided to visit the decks:

Hyak. Hyak. Hyak.

Yuki thinks there’s a middle finger somewhere; can you spot it?

I wonder if you saw the 2 birds like I did :/

She’s still thinking about the middle finger.

 

Well, last 3 pictures before I wrap up this post!

We stopped by a roadside stall selling native cherries, as well as berries of all kinds. They taste great!

Rainier cherries! Available only in Seattle! These cherries taste pretty sweet, and they have seeds!

Skies of Seattle, as far as the eye can see!

The original plan was to go kayaking in the morning, but Maurice and I chickened out because the damn weather was toooooooo COLD. The air was already making us shiver, so we would probably be screaming like little schoolgirls if we dropped into the water.

No way!

So we decided to go for a hike around the lake instead, with Michael and the family dog, Goldie:

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Pictures of the lake from different angles!

A little dam which we came upon along the way.

There’s no way you can imagine the size of these trees; there’s old Goldie in the corner of the picture

Part 2 of TNWYCITSOTT(There’s No Way You Can Imagine The Size Of These Trees); look at how tiny Ms Long is, compared to those trees!

That’s us, crossing one of the many bridges along the trail

I think this has a pretty nice feel to it, other than the fact that it is overexposed.

Suspicious looking berry which we found along the trail. No, it isn’t blueberries; blueberries don’t have red stems!

Nice view of the lake from here

This is the ‘cookhouse’, where they cook the food and just sit around and have a good time together.

 

We had fun with 2 of the kids, who were absolutely fascinated by the campfire:

This was kid no.3, but he’s just as fascinated by the fire as the other two

Yuki with the 2 kids; aren’t they cute? But they’re realllllllll cheeky; one of them kept licking my jacket/hand while I was playing with him. God!

Those 2 kids were beginning to throw everything they could find into the fire, so we decided to get them to extinguish the fire by getting water. Seemed like a great idea, because they kept fetching water like there was no tomorrow:

And believe me, they were excited

 

Nothing much happened, just that it began to rain at night and we were frigging cold throughout the entire night. I wrapped myself in 3 layers of clothings + socks + sleeping bag, and I was still cold! The tents were pretty easy to sleep in, except for the fact that rain water would leak into the tents and get our pants/feet all cold and wet.

Now that really sucks when you have to get up like,7a.m., in the morning. Frigging air was so cold, you could see ’steam’ coming out from your mouth! It must have been around 15 degrees celsius then.

We were invited by ChuNi(our supervisor/boss) to join her on a 3-days camping trip at Orcas Island. Needless to say, we were excited (Darren didn’t join us as he went to Mt. St. Helen’s with his Microsoft counterparts that day)

Orcas Island is part of the San Juan Islands(pronounced as ‘San Wan’), located off the northern coast of Washington. It takes an hour and twenty minutes by ferry from the city of Anacortes. More information here –>

 http://www.gonorthwest.com/Washington/sanjuan/Orcas/orcas_island.htm

 After a 2 hour drive to Anacortes, we reached the ferry terminal at about 11 in the morning. Our ferry leaves at 11.45, so we had some time to wander around.

Note: Alot of the pictures featured are taken by either Ms Long or Yuki

The 2 ladies and 1 man

These 2 dogs were enjoying the wind all the while at the back.

That’s about 16 degrees Celsius ~_~

On the way up the ferry; did you see the name of the ferry? It’s called ‘Hyak’

The Hyak is quite an old ship, but she’s sturdy enough! The ferry ride didn’t turn out to be boring; not with one of ChuNi’s ex-colleagues(who introduced himself as Mr Siow[oh my]) having a conversation with us. Nothing particularly interesting in our conversation, so I won’t be mentioning anything here.

At around 12.40pm, we reached Orcas Island!

Driving to our camp site..

Small little marsh which we passed by

 

After 20 minutes of driving, we finally reached our camp site!

Sites 119-125 were all ours

Our first task was to set up our tents, which was placed at the corner of the campsite.

It took awhile to set up, but it was fun No picture of the completed tents for now, they’ll be on their way later!

After setting up the tents, we decided to do some exploring and hiking as the others were taking their kids to the pier for a swim:

:)

A view of the lake which our camp site was overlooking.

Group photo before the hike

 

There’s a little spot at the end of the trail where you could just sit there and look out at the lake, it’s pretty good!

A mushroom the size of a burger!

wth?

 

We got bored after hiking around for an hour or so, so Maurice and I decided to go for a swim after being invited by ChuNi.

“Come on in! The water’s fine!”

From the look of our faces, you obviously know it isn’t -__-

Swimming back to safety! Hur hur hur hur!

 

The family dog, Goldie, decided to drop down for a swim too. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any steps for her to get up after she got tired of swimming, so…

Goldie Rescue Team in operation! That’s Maurice, and idunnowhoisthat.

 

Maurice and I were shivering like mad when we got out of the water, and that didn’t stop for a long, long time.

 

We decided to take a stroll up the hiking trail, to which someone(I forgot who) suggested that we should collect some firewood to start a fire. And so we did

zomfg! what a big fire!

But it’s not ours :/ We rubbed the sticks together till our hands hurt, and not even a spark was seen. We gave up, and just handed the firewood to Johnny.

More pics from the campfire:

Ace thought that the fire wasn’t big enough.

That’s Emily sitting on the chair; she’s a friend(o rly?) whom Johnny brought along for this trip.

 

Later in the evening, Michael(ChuNi’s son) asked if we were interested to go up Mt. Constitution with them. Of course we were!

That’s the lookout tower at the top of Mt. Constitution; it’s not very big, but it’s definitely tall enough.

These pictures simply didn’t do the scenery justice. But believe me, the view is breathtaking The wind was so cold and strong, I think my ears went numb from cold ~_~

After half an hour or so up on Mt. Constitution, we went back down and had dinner. Nightfall is pretty scary, as you watch the surroundings turn darker and darker…without any sign of lights around you. Fortunately, T.J.(ChuNi’s husband) brought a gas lamp over to our site and left it there for the night. We began to play drinking games, such as 终极密码, then started to share ghost stories. Emily sure had alot of ghost stories to share

Each of us took turns to visit the washroom, with only a torchlight to use as a guiding light. Anddd there’s no lights in the washroom! So if you happen to be crapping halfway and the batteries went dead….just pray that you don’t hear someone calling your name between your legs! Alright, that’s a joke

 

The best part of the night was when we looked up and saw this huge array of stars in the skies; it was simply amazing! My camera’s ISO wasn’t high enough to take any pictures, so I found a picture that resembled closely to what we saw that night:

Picture courtesy of http://www.main.org/cessmaq/images/

 

Well, here’s a last picture to wrap up Day 1!