Orcas Island and Just a Little Math

I'd arrived on Orcas and settled in on the 2nd of July. The next day, the 3rd, is also the day before the 4th. So, I'd arrived 2 days before the 4th of July holiday which I think(!) is one of the bigger holidays up there. There's a parade and stuff. But that's the 4th and before the 4th is the 3rd and I'm an in-order kind of guy so I'm going to talk about the 3rd first.

Usually after the long drive up I'm pretty knackered the next day or so and this time was no exception. But one thing I wanted to do was to paddle from Eastsound down to the Rosario Resort for lunch. The 3rd, which happens to be a day before the 4th this year, brought wonderful weather and a willingness by my friend to make the paddle.

Eastsound, by the way, is where my friends have their store and where I was working as well since I really wasn't on vacation so much as on a trip, if you take my meaning. They've recently installed WiFi and I actually had a decent connection for the first time in several years so that was nice. They're sort of luddites so the installation of WiFi I think might have damaged their psyche a bit. But getting them to adopt reasonable levels of technology is a goal I have. Sort of like the drinking thing but with somewhat less potential for vomiting.

It's a pretty short distance, about 3 miles from Eastsound to Rosario and massively inefficient from a time allocation perspective. Figure an hour down, lunch, and an hour back, plus boat unload and load time. So call it 3 hours all together. But, as I say, the weather was nice and it's a helluva pretty place to paddle. Actually, I should qualify my take on the weather. I thought it was really, really nice. My friend Leon thought it was really, really hot. There's a few pictures below and there's a good clue in them as to how hot Leon thought it was.

Here's a picture of Leon after we'd been on the water for all of about 4 minutes or so:

While we on our way to Rosario we happened to run into this:

Poor choice of words. We didn't run into it, but we did see it. That there is a landing craft type boat. And on it, though you can't tell from this picture, is all the stuff that's needed for the $15,000 fireworks display the Orcas guys (I'm not sure who exactly) put on. I'm not certain but I believe the reason they do it off of a boat is because they want the display to be over Eastsound (the patch of water) that's right along Main Street in Eastsound (the town). This should also give you a good idea of how nice the weather was. Eastsound (the patch of water) is most certainly not like this all the time, nor is the sky nearly so cloudless much of the time.

Anyway, the paddle down was uneventful. This here is a picture of Rosario Resort from the water:

I think it's gone through it's ups and downs recently but back in the day it was apparently quite the swanky place. It's still really nice to be sure, but it's sort of showing it's age a bit. Unfortunately for us lunch was not all that great. I didn't get a chance to get back to see if it was a one off problem or not, so I'll go again when I'm up next.

And, by way of completeness and symmetry, here's Leon paddling on the way back from Rosario after we'd been on the water for about 4 minutes or so:

As I said and you can see, Leon thought it was hot.

The next day, being after the 3rd, was the 4th of July. This was my third 4th of July on Orcas/in Eastsound. It's been pretty much the same each time. There's a parade in the morning. The town is busy with lot's of folks, it's hard to find a place for lunch that isn't mobbed, then there's a cookout and then fireworks and then it's the 5th. Which might sound boring or otherwise not very engaging but it's really charming. Says I.

Here's just a couple more pictures, this time of the parade:

That's the crowd for the parade. I thought it was a little less crowded than in years past, but I really don't know what the numbers were.

I have some confidence none of these fellows served in the civil war, but who knows. I get a kick from how small a group they are marching down the street though.

Every time I ask Shawna or Leon who these people are and every time they tell me and every time I forget. Anyway they're a bunch of loonies that dance down the street to more or less not well orchestrated music that they play on, what are to my ear, not very well tuned instruments not appropriate for a parade. But when you see them there's no doubt they're having a great time and I guess that's good enough justification for lots of things.