{"id":355,"date":"2010-04-03T13:21:30","date_gmt":"2010-04-03T21:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=355"},"modified":"2010-04-03T13:22:42","modified_gmt":"2010-04-03T21:22:42","slug":"trip-to-orcas-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=355","title":{"rendered":"Trip to Orcas Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Two weekends ago, Tom and I went with Brendan, Ellie and Sierra up to Orcas Island, which is located in the San Juan Islands, northwest of Seattle.\u00a0 You have to take the ferry to get there, and while the jury is still out as to whether my stomach likes the ferry or not, I do always enjoy looking at the mountains and the beautiful Puget Sound on the trip to the islands.\u00a0 Spring camping has become somewhat of a tradition with this group.\u00a0 Coincidentally, the first camping trip of spring is also usually associated with something important in the lives of the four of us.\u00a0 For example, last year’s spring camping trip was when Brendan and Ellie told us they were pregnant with Sierra.\u00a0 This year, it was Sierra’s first ever camping trip, something to be celebrated indeed.<\/p>\n

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After we arrived and set up camp, we decided to hike up Mount Constitution, which is the high point of the island, and I believe the high point of all of the San Juans.\u00a0 The hike starts out very flat, and arcs around a lovely lake.\u00a0 We cruised this part, stopping only to take pictures.\u00a0 Once you leave the lake, however, the trail gets serious.\u00a0 Quickly.\u00a0 It climbs over a thousand feet in about a mile and a half, and quickly had us slowing down and breathing hard.\u00a0 Tom is training for a mountaineering class, so he was carrying about 30 lbs of all of our water and stuff, and was working the hardest.<\/p>\n

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About three quarters of the way up the mountain, Sierra needed to eat, so Ellie took a break to nurse.\u00a0 Since Tom’s training, he wanted to keep his pace and momentum, so we told him to go on ahead.\u00a0 Remember how I mentioned that he had all the stuff?\u00a0 Right. So about ten minutes after he leaves, Sierra decided that then would be a good time to have a total diaper blowout.\u00a0 Not good.\u00a0 So we sent Brendan scurrying off after Tom, and Ellie did her best to carry Sierra in a way that wouldn’t make her messier than she already was.\u00a0 So now Ellie and I are alone with the baby, with no rain gear, diapers, blankets or anything and the wind starts to pick up.\u00a0 And it’s about to rain.\u00a0 This is not a good situation to be in, and we should have known better.\u00a0 Luckily, before our situation could turn from bad to worse, we heard Tom and Brendan coming down the trail.\u00a0 After a quick on-the-trail change of the diaper, we were off again.<\/p>\n

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We finally made it to the top, where there is a castle-esque look out tower that was built by the CCC .\u00a0 From the top of the mountain, the view overlooks the sound, Mount Baker to the east, Vancouver, Vancouver Island and the mountains of Canada to the north, and Anacortas and the Cascades to the south.\u00a0 Beautiful.<\/p>\n

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Back at camp, the evening was uneventful, and quiet, even though the stove broke and Tom and Brendan had to improvise by cooking over a fire.\u00a0 Sierra slept well, snug as a bug, though I think Ellie was a bit cold.\u00a0 All in all, a successful weekend adventure in a beautiful place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weekends ago, Tom and I went with Brendan, Ellie and Sierra up to Orcas Island, which is located in the San Juan Islands, northwest…<\/p>\n

Continue readingTrip to Orcas Island<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","category-hiking","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}