Since Bree is off on Spring Break this week, we head up to San Juan Island to visit the new home of our friends Marc and Megan. We start the trip with a fun seaplane flight from Lake Union to Friday Harbor, and have great weather for the flight.
Marc and Megan have a small adjacent guest house that’s perfect for the three of us.
After settling in and resting for a bit, we go for a nice walk around surrounding Point Joe, walking as far as the national park at American Camp. While walking past the visitor center parking lot, we’re surprised to see a red fox walking the other way.
Before dinner, Marc points out a fox burrow down halfway between their house and the ocean. In the late afternoon, one of the two foxes that live there emerges to take a nap at the burrow entrance. Later, it stirs and pads off.
We start our day on San Juan Island with a walk at Mount Grant Preserve. There’s a nice climb to a peak that has good views west towards Vancouver Island and east overlooking farmland.
We have lunch in Friday Harbor at the Bakery San Juan, then walk through town. Bree picks up a cardigan at a thrift store, we poke into a bookstore, and we wander down to the waterfront.
In the evening, Marc pulls out a backgammon board and plays a game with Jan. Bree’s interested in learning how to play, so Jan teaches her with game, and then she plays a couple of games with Marc.
Marc has a number of toys, including a motorcycle. Bree happily accepts Marc’s offer of a motorcycle ride.
After lunch, Marc takes us to Krystal Acres farm so we can look at their alpacas. They’re very fluffy and very cute.
From the farm we drive a bit north to English Camp and make a short hike to the viewpoint at the top of Young Hill.
We stop by the guest house to pack up, then Marc drops us off at the marina for the seaplane flight back to Seattle. On the way we see one of the U.S. Navy’s submarines heading out of Puget Sound toward the Pacific.
Bree is going to boarding school for the last two years of high school. She’s found plenty to like at her current school — including good friends and a great theater department — but last summer she decided she wanted to study at a school with more challenging classes. Following in Evan’s footsteps, Bree ultimately decided to apply to some boarding schools on the East Coast.
She was recently accepted at Choate Rosemary Hall, the same school Jan and Evan attended, and today she clicks the “I’m going” button on their application website. She’ll leave home to begin studying there in early September.
Bree recently succeeded at getting our cat Mojo to wear a collar with a bell, so that he’s less likely to be successful at hunting birds and small animals in our yard. Now Mojo jingles everywhere he goes. We’ve taken to calling him “Jinglecat” or “Mr. Jingles”.
It’s been snowing at Crystal Mountain, so Angela, Bree, and Jan head there for one final day of skiing to end the season. Although it’s already spring in Seattle, we have winter conditions at Crystal, including snow in the afternoon.
We celebrate our upcoming anniversary a little early with a course menu dinner at Violet and a variety show at The 2024 Moisture Festival. The show has an eclectic roster of acts including jugglers, dancers, acrobats, and musicians. The most striking act is a woman who uses an air blower to inflate a huge balloon — and then sticks her head inside it and dances around.
One of the field research tasks that Liya and her classmates help with is taking samples and measurements of trees. To collect leaf samples from some of the trees, they have to shoot a cord up into the branches and then try to get a leaf to fall down. This is normally done by tying a cord onto a rock and then using a slingshot to fire the rock up into the branches. The instructors are leery of letting students shoot rocks with slingshots, so they advise the use of alternate ammunition: limes.
Liya turns out to be a pretty good shot with the slingshot.
Some of the birds that Liya has to trap and release for research are small and cute.
“Valley of the Gnomes” reads an enigmatic label on a marker in Apple Maps just 1.5 miles away from our house. It’s a nice day, so Jan decides to walk there are an investigate.
There’s not much to the valley: a wooded ravine with a bridge across it. People who live in the houses along the ravine have set out a bunch of gnome statues that can be seen from the bridge. Since the only place you can walk is the straight bridge, the place doesn’t really offer the sensation of exploring for something. But as the destination for a walk it’s cute enough.
Our cat Moxie likes to hide in this red maple bush in front of a neighbor’s house. He appears to like looking out at things without being able to be seen himself.
Sometimes when Jan’s coming back from getting a morning coffee, he’ll be about to pass this bush and suddenly hear “Rawr! Rawr-rawr-rawr-RAWR!” coming from inside the bush — like the bush is scolding him. Perhaps Moxie is saying, “Where have you been?!” Moxie will leap out onto the sidewalk and follow Jan to our house and inside.
Because we celebrated our anniversary two weeks ago, we almost forget that today’s our actual anniversary day. We’ve been married for 26 years!
Bree’s school puts on their spring musical, “Six”, adapted from a Broadway show about the six wives of Henry VIII. Bree, her costuming co-lead, Leila, and the whole costuming team have done an amazing job putting together glam costumes for all six leads. Bree had her heart set on creating a tear-away costume for Anne of Cleves, which necessitated not only creating both an inner and outer costume, but also making sure the outer one tears away just where it’s supposed to and not anywhere else.
Jan takes Lyn to visit her sister Chuckie in Vermont. Last year Jan realized that he hadn’t seen his one remaining aunt, Chuckie, for over ten years — and now that she lives in Vermont with her son Dave and his wife Diane, Jan isn’t going to see her again unless he takes a trip specifically to see her. She’s turning 92 this June; the window to see her one more time is closing. He also thinks it’d be nice for Lyn and Chuckie to see each other again, so he’s made arrangements with Dave and Diane to bring Lyn with him for a visit.
Today is just a long travel today. Angela drops Jan and Lyn off at the airport, then Jan and Lyn fly to Chicago. The plane has to detour around a storm, so by the time it lands at O’Hare there’s just enough time to get to the gate for the connecting flight to Burlington. They’d hoped to eat dinner in the airport, but they just have a moment to buy prepackaged sandwiches from a kiosk. These will prove to taste terrible.
They land in Burlington, where they pick up a car and make the hour drive to Middlebury. They’re staying for the next four nights at the Middlebury Inn on the town green. It’s after 11:00 pm by the time they check in, so everything’s quiet, but the time difference means that they’re both up for a while.
Jan and Lyn spend a little of the morning walking around Middlebury’s town green and stopping at Little Bean Coffee Roasters. In the middle of the morning, they make the short drive out of town to the rural home of Dave and Diane. When they arrive, Chuckie is sitting in the kitchen. She’s absolutely delighted to see Lyn again — it’s probably been 6 years or so since they last saw each other. Dave says that this is probably the happiest he’s ever seen his mother. Finally Chuckie says, “Oh, geez, I want to go get changed out of pajamas!”
It’s a beautiful spring morning, so we hang out on the back deck for a while. Lyn and Chuckie chat happily while Jan catches up with Dave and Diane. Eventually we go inside and have something for lunch.
After lunch, Diane takes Lyn, Chuckie, and Jan for a walk around the back of the property. There’s a gravel path that Chuckie can negotiate with her walker. For many years, Chuckie and her husband Ber were avid 4WD off-road jeep explorers in the desert around Moab, Utah. When Jan sees Chuckie using the walker on the path, he gets a laugh out of her when he says: “Chuckie, it’s good to see that you’re still off-roading!”
Jan and Lyn are a bit jet-lagged so go back to Middlebury to rest for a while. They return at dinnertime, and the five of them eat a home-cooked meal. After dinner Dave and Diane teach Jan to play the board game, “Wingspan”, which is loosely based on birds. Dave is an avid birder, which doesn’t confer any special strategic advantage in the game — but it does mean that Dave and Diane play the game often, and that does confer an advantage. Lyn tries to follow along for a while, but the games rules are quite complex, so she spends most of the evening talking with Chuckie.
After all the excitement of the sister’s reunion yesterday, Chuckie seems to be quite worn out. Jan and Lyn visit in the morning, but Chuckie wants to stay in bed, so Dave and Diane take Jan and Lyn for a walk in the Green Mountains east of town.
They go to the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, a pretty nature walk near land where Frost lived and wrote. The trail is decorated with plaques presenting some of Frost’s poems. Dave says the trail is a favorite place for him to go birding. As we walk along he tells us what kinds of birds we’re listening to, and he points them out when he can see them.
We stop back in Middlebury for lunch, but the intended restaurant is closed, so we have lunch again back and Dave and Diane’s. Chuckie’s up and about, although she’s quieter today during lunch.
Jan and Lyn spend the later part of the afternoon in Middlebury. After it stops raining, they go for another walk in the area around the inn. In the evening, Dave and Diane come back into town and we all have dinner together at Fire & Ice, a sort of upscale pub.
Jan and Lyn go out for bagels and then coffee in Middlebury, then later in the morning go back to Dave and Diane’s house. Chuckie joins us for lunch, and seems to have a more energy for conversation today. When Dave describes a webcam set up in an eagles’ nest, Chuckie exclaims, “Those poor eagles! How would you like a camera pointing at you and Diane all the time?!?”
In the afternoon Dave and Diane meet us at Otter View Park for a walk along a wetland boardwalk to Otter Creek. This is another favorite area of Dave’s for birding, and he identifies the birds we’re hearing and seeing. Although it was cloudy in the morning, it’s turned into a warmer, sunny afternoon, and it’s pleasant to sit for a while on benches facing a cattail marsh.
Diane cooks dinner while we chat with Dave and Chuckie, and the five of us have an enjoyable meal together.
Jan and Lyn make one final morning visit to see Chuckie, David, and Diane. We chat over tea and cookies for a bit before it’s time to hit the road. There are hugs and goodbyes all around, and then the rest of the day is a long blur of travel to Burlington, then Dulles, then Seattle.