This time, it would be orca whales instead of minkes. With the rain threatening the whole time, I wasn't sure this was a great idea but I figured what the heck. So off I went.
The boat ride left from Port Townsend in Washington, winded its way among islands in the sound, and landed at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. On the way up, we saw seals (neat!), a nesting bald eagle family (from very far away), and a variety of birds. On the way back, the boat looked for whales.
Unfortunately, the whales were sleep swimming when we looked for them. The whales travel in schools (called pods) swimming all that time. When they're awake, they actually do the leaping and whatever that we love. When they're in their sleep phase, they still move but it's kind of like synchronized low-effort swimming. We saw a herd of seven. You'd see their fins break the surface and then go down again. Unlike off Cape Cod, you didn't see flippers or much else. The group that went out during lunch saw them jumping. Just bad timing on my part I guess.
While they were watching them, we were left on the San Juan Island. Most of the islands in this area are privately owned. People have pricey little houses on the islands and have to be supplied by ferry boat (that morning/evening commute's got to be tough). Because of telecommuting, more and more people can live out there so, like everywhere else, farmers are selling their land for a killing and houses are sprouting up. It's all pretty disappointing.
There's a national park on San Juan Island called the San Juan Island National Historic Site. I only got to the visitor center because it turned out that the actual park is in two pieces and both were six or so miles from the visitor center. Neither piece was open the day I was there. I got to study the history of the park at the visitor center anyway.
If you remember Fort Clatsup and Astoria, Oregon (above), the United States and Britain signed the Oregon Treaty in 1846 to set the US-Canadian boundary in the northwest area. Unfortunately, there were some disputed islands in the Strait of Juan de Fuca (north of Puget Sound). Britain defined some of them to be in Canada while we had them as being our turf. San Juan Island was the biggest of these disputed islands. Both countries had settlers on the island and tensions started rising.
In 1859, a US farmer shot and killed a pig owned by a British subject when the pig trespassed into the farmer's garden. Tempers quickly flared in "The Pig War". A company of US troops under George Pickett (whose name would be immortally linked to the failed charge at Gettysburg four years later) was sent to the island. A small fleet of British ships was assembled offshore. Then things calmed down (largely because of cooler heads on the British side). Military camps were set up on opposite ends of the island (where the park pieces exist today) and diplomatic solutions were explored.
The American Civil War forced things to cool more. The British wanted to side with the Confederacy, Lincoln wanted them neutral, and no one wanted to provoke something in the boonies to excite the other. Finally, in 1872, the dispute was submitted to arbitration and Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany ruled that San Juan Island belonged to the United States.
The only casualty of the encounter was the pig. Washington state ended up getting a national historic site out of it.
I asked why it was called Friday Harbor. The ship's crew said no one was sure. It was either someone's name or else it came from a misunderstanding. It's said that someone was boating in the area way back when and asked an islander what the name of the bay was. The islander thought he'd asked what day it was, and told him "Friday". Who knows.
Friday Harbor, while large, had very few of the chain stores that I'm used to seeing. Except for the gasoline stores and an Ace hardware store, there were no McDonald's, Burger Kings, Blockbusters, etc. The park center person explained that the town was a bit snooty and they would refuse to have any such establishments on the island. However, as more farms get ripped up for houses, I can see the pressure to have them will just keep increasing.
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