alexsidles
Paddler
I spent the weekend at my favorite place on earth: Strawberry Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington.
Traffic from Seattle was horrible, as one might expect on a Friday afternoon. I got to the launch point at Washington Park, Anacortes about ten minutes before sunset. There wouldn't be nearly enough time to reach Strawberry Island 4.5 miles north (7 km) before full dark. It is possible to camp in Washington Park, but you have to pay for it, and worse yet, the campground is overrun on summer weekends with drunken yahoos and their accompanying barking dogs, thumping bass, and shrieking laughter; a truly hellish ordeal.
Luckily, I remembered hearing about a campsite on nearby Burrows Island, just around the corner to the south. There'd be no yahoos there, for sure, if I only had time to get there before dark. I loaded my boat with frantic speed, running my gear down to the beach and dashing back to the car for more, racing against the fading light. I launched at 8:30, after the sun was below the horizon but still in time to enjoy a glorious sky.
As I approached Burrows Island from the north, I was confronted with an unbroken, steep, rocky shoreline. To the right, I spotted a lighthouse and headed toward it, hoping to find a beach nearby that the lighthouse keepers might have used back in the days when lighthouses were manned. There was indeed a beach by the lighthouse, but it was too small for camping and offered no easy access to the uplands. Taking a gamble, I decided to circumnavigate Burrows in the dark, in hopes that I would still be able to recognize the camping beach when I passed it.
I never did find the camping beach. (It turns out it is at Alice Bight, another half mile up the east side.) As the stars came out, I finally stumbled across a private beach at Peartree Bay with a cabin grandfathered in before Burrows became public land. There looked to be no one home, so I set up camp on the gravel beach just below the driftwood line. In Washington, such tideland is open to public access even if privately owned, although I recognized that sleeping on such a beach was really stretching the limits of what could be considered legitimate "public access." Normally, I would worry about high tides swamping me during the night, but the moon was in its quarter phase, so I knew tides would be low.
I forgot my sleeping pad at home, so I decided to just embrace austerity and lay down under the stars with no tent.
It seemed possible that the cabin's owners might decide to show up on a beautiful Saturday, plus I was in a hurry to get to Strawberry Island, so I left the next morning as soon as the favorable flood tide began. A glassy Rosario Strait greeted me as I rounded the corner, and I drifted north toward Strawberry with scarcely any effort.
There was plenty of wildlife activity in the strait. I saw all four of the "Big Four" alcids: Pigeon Guillemot, Marbled Murrelet, Common Murre, and Rhinoceros Auklet. The murres and murrelets were particularly numerous. The murres were calling back and forth to one another with their penguin-like groans, and the murrelets were already assembling in flocks in preparation for the winter.
There was some sort of outrageous salmon run in progress, with giant fish leaping out of the water all around me. A passing fisherman told me they were mostly pinks and silvers, with a few kings thrown in. The dense fish population attracted lots of Harbor Porpoises, which swarmed all over the strait in pods of three to six animals.
As I approached Strawberry Island, I saw a funny sight: huddled on one tiny rock were no less than six species of bird: a Pelagic Cormorant, a Double-crested Cormorant, half a dozen Heermann's Gulls (my favorite gull), a Thayer's Gull, two Glaucous-winged Gulls, and four Surfbirds! Who knows why so many birds would want to crowd together on this one particular rock? There were so many other rocks nearby that looked equally appealing to my human eyes.
Strawberry Island is like its own separate, pocket-sized world. There are mountains to climb—in reality, just fifteen-foot rocks. There are plains to wander—in reality, just a few open patches of dry grass. There is a deep, mysterious forest—which, in reality, can be explored in ten minutes. There is a waterfront—a pebble beach twenty feet wide. You feel like you are transported to a living diorama of our planet, with every ecosystem a five-minute walk from every other. Will you sit on the high rocks and survey your surrounds? Will you hide in the cool shade of the woods? Clamber down the cliff to the fjords, where the water laps against the land? A million miniature adventures await.
The cliffs overlook the serene but wild waters of Rosario Strait, and you can sit on the rocks with your feet dangling and watch the porpoises and seabirds forage below you. Although houses are visible in the bay of Cypress Island to the east, the dominant view, especially to the west, is of undeveloped, forested islands and maze-like water channels that twist in every direction.
I set up camp on the "plains" overlooking the water and again slept under the stars.
Another kayak party did arrive in the late afternoon, to my annoyance, but I was very fortunate in that they were well-behaved campers. They kept their noise down, didn't camp right on top of me, and in general were about as pleasant as fellow campers can be. If you have to share your favorite place on earth with strangers, it's nice to share it with strangers who are respectful of its beauty and peace. Better still, they left early the next morning.
On Sunday, I dawdled as long as I could, extracting every minute of time on my island. Eventually, the ebbing tide and sinking sun meant it was time to paddle back to Washington Park and get in my car. I took a last tour through the mountains, forests, and plains, then headed down to the waterfront to pack.
A slow ebb dragged me southward, back to the full-size world.
Alex
Traffic from Seattle was horrible, as one might expect on a Friday afternoon. I got to the launch point at Washington Park, Anacortes about ten minutes before sunset. There wouldn't be nearly enough time to reach Strawberry Island 4.5 miles north (7 km) before full dark. It is possible to camp in Washington Park, but you have to pay for it, and worse yet, the campground is overrun on summer weekends with drunken yahoos and their accompanying barking dogs, thumping bass, and shrieking laughter; a truly hellish ordeal.
Luckily, I remembered hearing about a campsite on nearby Burrows Island, just around the corner to the south. There'd be no yahoos there, for sure, if I only had time to get there before dark. I loaded my boat with frantic speed, running my gear down to the beach and dashing back to the car for more, racing against the fading light. I launched at 8:30, after the sun was below the horizon but still in time to enjoy a glorious sky.
As I approached Burrows Island from the north, I was confronted with an unbroken, steep, rocky shoreline. To the right, I spotted a lighthouse and headed toward it, hoping to find a beach nearby that the lighthouse keepers might have used back in the days when lighthouses were manned. There was indeed a beach by the lighthouse, but it was too small for camping and offered no easy access to the uplands. Taking a gamble, I decided to circumnavigate Burrows in the dark, in hopes that I would still be able to recognize the camping beach when I passed it.
I never did find the camping beach. (It turns out it is at Alice Bight, another half mile up the east side.) As the stars came out, I finally stumbled across a private beach at Peartree Bay with a cabin grandfathered in before Burrows became public land. There looked to be no one home, so I set up camp on the gravel beach just below the driftwood line. In Washington, such tideland is open to public access even if privately owned, although I recognized that sleeping on such a beach was really stretching the limits of what could be considered legitimate "public access." Normally, I would worry about high tides swamping me during the night, but the moon was in its quarter phase, so I knew tides would be low.
I forgot my sleeping pad at home, so I decided to just embrace austerity and lay down under the stars with no tent.
It seemed possible that the cabin's owners might decide to show up on a beautiful Saturday, plus I was in a hurry to get to Strawberry Island, so I left the next morning as soon as the favorable flood tide began. A glassy Rosario Strait greeted me as I rounded the corner, and I drifted north toward Strawberry with scarcely any effort.
There was plenty of wildlife activity in the strait. I saw all four of the "Big Four" alcids: Pigeon Guillemot, Marbled Murrelet, Common Murre, and Rhinoceros Auklet. The murres and murrelets were particularly numerous. The murres were calling back and forth to one another with their penguin-like groans, and the murrelets were already assembling in flocks in preparation for the winter.
There was some sort of outrageous salmon run in progress, with giant fish leaping out of the water all around me. A passing fisherman told me they were mostly pinks and silvers, with a few kings thrown in. The dense fish population attracted lots of Harbor Porpoises, which swarmed all over the strait in pods of three to six animals.
As I approached Strawberry Island, I saw a funny sight: huddled on one tiny rock were no less than six species of bird: a Pelagic Cormorant, a Double-crested Cormorant, half a dozen Heermann's Gulls (my favorite gull), a Thayer's Gull, two Glaucous-winged Gulls, and four Surfbirds! Who knows why so many birds would want to crowd together on this one particular rock? There were so many other rocks nearby that looked equally appealing to my human eyes.
Strawberry Island is like its own separate, pocket-sized world. There are mountains to climb—in reality, just fifteen-foot rocks. There are plains to wander—in reality, just a few open patches of dry grass. There is a deep, mysterious forest—which, in reality, can be explored in ten minutes. There is a waterfront—a pebble beach twenty feet wide. You feel like you are transported to a living diorama of our planet, with every ecosystem a five-minute walk from every other. Will you sit on the high rocks and survey your surrounds? Will you hide in the cool shade of the woods? Clamber down the cliff to the fjords, where the water laps against the land? A million miniature adventures await.
The cliffs overlook the serene but wild waters of Rosario Strait, and you can sit on the rocks with your feet dangling and watch the porpoises and seabirds forage below you. Although houses are visible in the bay of Cypress Island to the east, the dominant view, especially to the west, is of undeveloped, forested islands and maze-like water channels that twist in every direction.
I set up camp on the "plains" overlooking the water and again slept under the stars.
Another kayak party did arrive in the late afternoon, to my annoyance, but I was very fortunate in that they were well-behaved campers. They kept their noise down, didn't camp right on top of me, and in general were about as pleasant as fellow campers can be. If you have to share your favorite place on earth with strangers, it's nice to share it with strangers who are respectful of its beauty and peace. Better still, they left early the next morning.
On Sunday, I dawdled as long as I could, extracting every minute of time on my island. Eventually, the ebbing tide and sinking sun meant it was time to paddle back to Washington Park and get in my car. I took a last tour through the mountains, forests, and plains, then headed down to the waterfront to pack.
A slow ebb dragged me southward, back to the full-size world.
Alex
