The San Juan Islands

Sorry this post is so late. But it is before the end of the week. My dad’s friend from work owns a house in Bellingham near the San Juan Islands. He wasn’t using it, so he let us have it for a few days.

Day One (Thursday)
We left on Thursday around 4:00. Noah brought a portable CD player so he was fighting over it with Danny the whole drive. This got annoying after a while. Fortunately I was able to grab it myself and turn it up loud enough so I couldn’t hear them arguing about who would get it after I was done. After about 2 hours we stopped at a Burger King. This kept Noah and Danny quiet for 5 or 10 minutes. We continued for 2 more hours with Noah and Danny fighting the whole time and finally reached Seattle. My dad had arranged for us to spend the night at his old high school friend’s house.

We reached the house around 8:00. Two of our friends named Tom and Dan live their. Tom is 15 and Dan is 13 but Dan was not actually there at the time so he won’t be mentioned anymore. We had been planning to have a big Starcraft game with them but about 2 hours before we got there (according to Tom), all but one of their computers crashed. I helped Tom try to repair the computers while everyone else fought over who would get to play first on the remaining computer. Around 10:00 Tom and I got the one we were working on to actually run windows again, but it wouldn’t install any updates or drivers, so all we could do was watch youtube. We eventually came downstairs and watched the last few hours of the Olympics. Throughout our time spent at his house, Tom used the expression ‘Go eat yourself.’ This is mainly because of something that happened to his toe involving a blister. If you want to hear the full story on that just tell me and I’ll put in a comment on it.

Day Two (Friday)
We woke up around 9 had pancakes for breakfast. Around 10 we walked to a park near their house and played basketball for a while. Every time I’ve played basketball with Tom and his dad I’ve gotten hit in the face with the ball. No difference this time, but I did dodge it where it would’ve hit me a second time. We walked back and left their house at about 11. My dad had also bought tickets for a tour at the boeing museum in Everett, WA, and we reached there around 1. The tour was pretty cool, but it involved a lot of walking so Gabe and Noah didn’t like it and complained a lot near the end. After the tour we drove until 5 when we reached Bellingham. We had dinner at a Mexican place in town first then went to the house.

Whenever we go to a hotel or cabin or something there is always a fight over who gets what bed. Luckily for me, I ended up in the top bunk of one bed and only had to sleep by Danny once. There were 3 kayaks in the house so me and Noah and Danny took them down to the beach. You didn’t strap yourself into the kind that was there; you sat on top. Noah and Gabe liked that very much because they were both afraid of being strapped in, flipping over, and drowning. XD We rammed each other for a while until Regina and Gabe came down and wanted a turn. There was a little island about 2 miles away and one of us (I’m not sure who) decided that we would all try to get to it in the kayaks. I eventually got to bed around 10.

Day 3 (Saturday)
I woke up at about 10 (am). Regina, mom, and Gabe had decided they were going to get to the island first. My dad was going to drive to a grocery store and buy stuff, and Noah said he was going with him. I had two choices:
1-Stay in the house with Danny
2-Go with my dad and Noah to the store and force Danny to come because there’d be nobody left to watch him.
I was with Danny either way, but the store had food so I opted to go there.

We reached the store about half an hour later. The first item we all agreed on that we needed to was a 24 can box of Dr. Pepper. We walked around for about an hour and picked many other things. There were different brands of soda scattered through the whole store and Danny and Noah kept asking for them. Just before we left my dad was picking a bottle of wine. I pointed one out because I liked the logo on it. He decided to try it, and later once my mom and him had tried it they both thought it was really good for the price.

When we got back we discovered that Regina, Gabe and my mom had not reached the island and turned back before they got there. Danny and Noah decided that I was coming with them and we would be first to get to it. 15 minutes later we were at the beach and ready to go. I put a rope in my kayak in case we needed it for some reason, and Noah put water in it. I soon discovered that Danny and Noah like taking water breaks, so we stopped every 15 minutes. They also kept arguing about who was bumping who whenever one of them accidentally drifted into the other. We reached the island after about an hour and 15 minutes. After messing around for a bit they both decided they were too tired and wanted to me to tow them both the whole way back! I’d brought the rope in case I needed to tow one of them for maybe a forth of the way so their demand was a bit annoying. While they sat there I made sure the rope was tied around both of their kayaks.

It took about an hour and a half to tow them back, but they kept declaring they were too tired if I asked them to row. When we got back I let them put the stuff away and ate lunch. After lunch I discovered that the current wiring for the DVD player and TV didn’t work. I tried different things for about an hour and have concluded that the TV there doesn’t receive any input. There was a good speaker system though, so I put some music on the upstairs speakers and took a comic book up there. Gabe and Noah soon followed me up. I went downstairs to get a Dr. Pepper and Noah followed me the whole way. As you can imagine, this gets annoying. Noah tends to do it a lot no matter where we are. I had to sleep with Danny that night, but he was already asleep. =D

Day 4 (Sunday)
When I woke up I immediately noticed that my arms were really sore from pulling Danny and Noah the 2 miles back from the island. None of us really did anything that day. Danny and Noah used they kayaks a little, but that was it. I slept through most of it. Nothing interesting happened.

Day 5 (Monday)
We got up early and drove to where a fairy was leaving for the San Juan Islands. If we’d left 2 minutes later we would’ve missed the fairy and had to do stuff for 2 hours. But we made the one we were planning on. There were snack and soda machines on each end of it, and Noah kept whining that he should get one. I decided to buy one just to annoy him, but the machine wouldn’t accept my many no matter how much I flattened it out. This made Noah very happy. It took about an hour to reach the largest island which is called San Juan Island.

We had lunch at a little restaurant then drove to the other side of the island in a rented van and sat there hoping a whale would pop up. This got boring after about 15 minutes, but it was fun to watch the periodical groups of kayakers clumsily paddling by. I forget how we filled the rest of that day, but at 3:30 we were back at the dock thing where we got off the original fairy. The next one was at 4:00 so we got some ice cream. The flavor I picked was Espresso Fudge Pie, which I’m sure Ben would like. We got back to the house around 8. That night Danny and Noah had to sleep in the same bed, but Danny wasn’t asleep by the time Noah got there. They were still awake and arguing over who had bumped who and who was taking all the covers when I got into the top bunk. It was hard to get to sleep that night,

Day 6 (Tuesday)
We drove back to Portland today. It’s not very fun to spend 6 hours in the back seat with Danny and Noah, but the batteries of the CD player had died so they couldn’t argue about that. We got back around 3.