“Join us on a girls’ trip! Some girlfriends and I have signed up for a 4-day kayaking trip in the San Juan Islands and I think you should come.”

…so came an invitation from my sister-in-law, maybe 3 months before the selected trip date.

And so: this was the trip that led to a big change.

It was not a “calling in Alaska” change: I did not have such a life-changing experience while on the trip that I decided not to return to pre-trip life in my current state of residence.

The kind of change it was: a tipping-point event.

This was an event that was preceded, and fueled, by compounded grief, grief-related perspective remodeling, little and big frustrations with work, and, not least, a few years of vision work and coaching that more and more, moved my happy-place dream toward mountains, possibly sea as well, and spending time doing things that excite me, and away from activities that validated and rewarded my skill set but didn’t excite me so much, any more.

I resigned from my full-time job, 2 weeks before the trip.

This post will be a story about the trip. The big job/life change is worth its own post, though there was something fitting, if not auspicious about the proposed destination: the last time I was there also marked a big change in my life: I led bike tours in the San Juans, the summer before I went off to college, away from my home state of Washington, in Minnesota.

That job was for the local YMCA Camp (Camp Seymour). The clients were pre-teen kids. When I (nickname: Burn) wasn’t leading the weeklong trips with my most excellent co-leader, Rich (nickname: Crash), I was managing the expedition gear shed, doing the camp’s dishes, and creatively illustrating and performing (in song) the day’s menu, with fellow dish-washer, Jen.

It was a surprisingly fun 3 months, working at and from a camp that didn’t have horses! There were some manageable challenges, the least of which was a warning about letting one of the kids on my tours have access to sugar. The soundtrack for that period of my life was 2 albums: Paul Simon’s Graceland and the Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs. I was 18, itching to get out, see the world, meet more of its people, learn all the things.

I discovered during this recent trip that: the above sums up everything that I remembered about the San Juans, aside from a) rain is probable, b) the climb up Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island is a beast to do on a bike, and c) riding a Washington State ferryboat is wonderful.

And so, we land on a guided kayak trip in 2023, when I rediscover the islands from a different perspective! Values for these variables were different, this time around: time (a new century!), age (54!), geography (we only visited one island that I’d cycled upon), transportation mode (obviously), role (tourist/traveller, rather than guide).

Also different, this time “around”: 30-some years of life, sports, travel, people, work, and body experiences.

Speaking of body: I’d never kayaked more than an intro class, every 10 years or so (REI does a great job!) and maybe a few hours on a Minnesota lake or on some calm Puget Sound waters (at Camp Seymour!). At least one of those classes had me doing kayak rolls, though not my most recent one. It was fairly unlikely we’d need to do that, in the tandem kayaks we used on this tour.

And so, prep for this trip included taking another kayak intro course, about 3 weeks prior, as well as:

• Continuing to do my usual weekly exercise, which includes 2x weekly weightlifting, 2-3 hours of various cardio activities like cycling and running, and a couple yoga classes per week.
• Resigning from my job (kidding, but it did happen in the month prior and you know, it was nice to not return to that job after my trip)
• Getting an airline ticket, dealing with Sun Country cancelling my flight, mere days after purchase (ugh), and moving that arrival to a day prior
• Inviting my longtime friend, Annette to join the trip
• Making plans with everybody to gather in Seattle and then get to the put-in spot on time, together

I had all the gear I needed! Thanks in part to the rafting trip we took last June, on the Rogue river. Sun shirts – hooded, long sleeved, light synthetic material – are super effective at keeping my ears from getting sunburned.

The trip date arrived soon enough! I was so excited, partly as I was looking forward to a billet with Laura’s parents, and some road time with Laura, her two friends, whom I hadn’t met yet, and Annette, as we made our way to the Anacortes ferry, then to a cabin we had rented at Lakedale resort.

We wrapped up our personal beverage and snack shopping, then met our guide and one additional group member: a reserved (from Minnesota, of course), able young man with a strong appetite and a worthy-of-my-envy mirrorless camera. We loaded everything up, got into the kayaks and paddled!

…across the bay to tiny Turn Island. A 10 minute paddle.

We got to test our skills, our paddle configurations (Feathered? How much and in which direction?), sunscreen situations, etc. over a tiny stretch of water. We also needed the bathroom on that island, by that hour!

From here on out, I’ll skip the play-by-play of our landings and disembarkments, mostly as nothing super exciting, like a capsize or an emergency “please change my kayak partner NOW,” happened even once, on the trip. Before I jump to highlights: here was our route, as you may see from the four Strava map snapshots spinkled through this post:

• Day 1: Turn Point County Park to Turn Island, then Yellow Island, then Jones Island
• Day 2: Jones Island to Speiden Island to Gossip Island to Stuart Island’s Reid Harbor
• Day 3: Wait out some light rain, then paddle all the way around Stuart Island. Use the kayak sail for a little bit at the end of our paddle. In the evening: hike to the Stuart lighthouse, which we had seen from the water during the day, and back
• Day 4: Stuart Island to Posey Island, past Roche Harbor to Garrison Bay

Fortune? And good people

The seven of us were dialed as a group, both while traveling, as well is in camp. Everyone but Nate and Annette was fairly inexperienced with paddling, but some kind instruction, a little patience, good gear (steering those tandems isn’t as difficult as I’d imagined), ridiculously good weather conditions and savvy route planning with and around currents… these all made for fun days in the kayaks with only good excitement.

Out of the kayaks, we also got along well, setting up and taking down camp, taking turns together on dishwashing duty, and conferring and deciding on route options.

Are you wondering what good excitement looked like, on this trip?

I’d love to share photos to illustrate it, but our two exciting events defied attempts at photographic evidence! I’ll do my best to describe them:

Exciting San Juans Kayaking Event #1

On day three, as we wrapped up our (counter clockwise) circumnavigation of Stuart Island, we entered into an area with cross-currents that made the water a little choppy.

But those whitecaps weren’t all whitecaps. Some flashed silver; they had fins. They were salmon, jumping out of the water! A lot of them. Everywhere around us!

Most of us hoped they’d land in our laps, which didn’t happen: no salmon dinners for us, aside from some packaged smoked salmon, the first day. It’s been awhile since I’ve cleaned a fish, so it’s just as well.

Still: we had several special interactions with wildlife: we also had seen river otters, a few times, including having one slink out of or Reid Harbor, within a few feet of us, one darkening evening. Each day we’d see a few seals, poking up their doggy snouts in the water. A few beaches had oyster beds, and there was lots to see in various tidepools.

Raccoons were common at the campsites, though for the most part they left us alone. I was a little surprised that there were compost boxes next to each composting toilet: campers were thus invited to stow in them any safe-for-compost food scraps, I assume partly as a deterrent to raccoons messing with tasty-smelling items elsewhere in our campsites.

Exciting San Juans kayaking event #2

This was also a nifty wildlife interaction: our last evening, we experienced a bioluminescence event. I didn’t know much about what makes such a thing, other than: it probably happens at high tide, it doesn’t happen all the time, and: science. Chemical reactions in (or perhaps more obviously, on) living bodies in the water.

Here’s what we experienced: our first night at Stuart Island (we camped there 2 nights in a row), Nate returned from the water’s edge after dinner and told us that bioluminescence was not happening.

The next night, his message, later in the evening, after we had made skillet s’mores (fire wasn’t allowed due to dry conditions): it’s on! Come check it out!

From the shore, I could brush a kayak paddle on the water surface and see illuminated sparkles, like a bottle of green-gold glitter had been strewn over the ripples, and started to sink – and a flashlight somewhere underneath was waved from left to right, just once. Illuminating anything moving about in the water. Mostly little things: plankton, a few minnows.

Nate helped Laura and Jillian into lifejackets and a kayak, to check out what might light up, a little further out. Annette and I followed: a paddle stroke lit up a whole arc on the side of the boat: light flashing on hundreds of fish, of many sizes and colors. So many!

Nate also went out, a little later with a GoPro camera, and stuck it underwater: his attempts to photograph it were for naught. I didn’t even try: as with my last snorkeling experience, I had a lot more fun just lapping up the interactions, not bothering with a camera. I’m glad I made that choice: from what I see in a simple Google image search, this is a tough event to capture! Here’s one that evokes what we saw and lived, though the sky wasn’t lighting up like that for us!

Strangely enough, today I happened upon a handful of fish scales along a beach, next to the Mississippi river in Minnesota, and this reminded me so much of the evening in Reid Harbor.

Things I’m glad I brought

• My binoculars. I saw an orca!
• Sunscreen
• Chaco’s
• Sunshirt with hood
• Book: Island of Sea Women (Lisa See). Perfect for a trip on the Pacific Ocean
• My Hoka trail shoes (Challenger ATR). They were a little over-cushioned for tidepooling, but they can’t be beat for pounding airport pavement or comfort on a 6-mile roundtrip walk to a lighthouse, partly in the dark.

Regrets and things I wished I’d brought

• Lip balm with sunscreen. Why do they even make it without sunscreen? I got the WORST sunburned lip, since my glacier skills course in … 2006? It took my lower lip nearly a week to start feeling normal again!
• A different waterproof iPhone case. Or a different camera assortment, overall. I used a waterproof, transparent bag for my iPhone but it was too hard to see the picture getting taken and half the time, the plastic created a sort of fuzzy filter affect on my photos. I had considered bringing my DSLR, but opted out of it as it’s bulky. I didn’t miss a Zoom… just needed a better option. I also had my Canon PowerShot ELPH, which was handy.

• A puffy jacket, or at least a puffy vest. I didn’t get cold; my layers of fleece and windproofing were chosen well, but there’s just this wonderfulness of wearing a puffy when near mountains. We had a cool morning or two.
• Not a regret of the trip, but a regret about the rest of my summer: I realized, maybe on overnight 3, that I hadn’t yet looked up to watch stars, this summer. At all. They sure were beautiful, viewed from Stuart and Jones Islands!

Awesomeness

• Our guide, Nate. Nice guy with lots of insights and knowhow, had great suggestions, led supportive route selection discussion. A fellow curly-haired beauty! Like our Rogue raft trip guides, he set a great example for skin protection by using clothes to cover his skin. (Maybe my comparison point – river trips and summer camp in the 1980’s, where staff was very tan, in shorts all the time – sets too low of a bar?). He was a great meal planner and cook, too! Meals were delicious and one night, he even made sangria for us all!

• Nate reached out to each of us individually, prior to the trip to answer any questions (and suss out what our group dynamic might look like, I’m sure!).
• We paddled 37 miles!
• We sailed! On kayaks! (2 per sail. So weird, slow, but odd and fun.)

• Everyone on the trip!
• The great weather
• The scenery!

• A well-needed hike: our legs got some action when we hiked to the Turn Point Lighthouse to catch the sunset. We had paddled by the light, earlier in the day. As far as lighthouse structures go, it was a little underwhelming, I suppose as it uses a more modern, compact technology. The grounds, on a very grassy hill, made up for it: the views were spectacular! We had time to backtrack a bit, to another grassy hill, to view the last droplets of setting-sun light:

And… that is all. Here are the rest of my photos. Go there! Get out in a kayak! Sign up for a trip with San Juan Kayak Expeditions! What adventures did you have, this summer?