Guemes Island Weekend

We spent the weekend at Melissa Whitman's family cabin on Guemes Island. Melissa gave us a weekend stay as a wedding present, and what a wonderful gift it turned out to be! We shared the weekend with my brother Jon, his wife Nadege, her sister Vasilia and her husband Patrice, who were visiting from France. James Wiley and his dog He-Man also joined us Saturday afternoon. He-Man is a 12 year old Golden Retreiver, old and slow on land but he's still a puppy when he gets into the water, it's really cute to watch him rediscover his youth! Patrice and Vasilia had never been to the US before, and really enjoyed seeing the Pacific Northwest and doing island things like going crabbing and digging clams.

We had a wonderful time. The cabin is situated on a small cliff above a cove, there's a trail down to the rocky beach where the rowboats were stored. From the cabin and the deck we had a great view out over Guemes channel towards Anacortes. A surprise bonus was that the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Cheiftan, two beautiful replicas of 18th century tall sailing ships, were in Anacortes, and on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon they came out and staged cannon battles right in front of us! We could not have had a better vantage point from which to watch them, at least not from shore. They are such beautiful ships. You may recognize the Lady Washinton from the Pirates of the Carribean movies, she played the royal navy ship HMS Interceptor. Unfortunately my camera batteries had died by Sunday afternoon, which was beautiful and sunny, so all my pictures of the ships are from rainy saturday instead. Oh well.

We caught 4 "keeper" Red Rock crabs on Saturday, so we had a nice crab dinner. Sunday morning Jon, Vasilia and Patrice got up at 6 am to catch the low tide and drove to the north end of the island and dug clams in the rain. It was a neap tide, so the evening "low" tide was only a little below the high tide, no good for clamming or beachcombing. We didn't catch any more crabs on Sunday (our pots all came up empty!) but we cooked up the clams and had them with a fresh tomato & eggplant sauce over fresh pasta, Yum!

Really, a wonderful weekend. I'm so glad we were able to share it with our French visitors, I can't help but think that it was a real highlight in their visit. We certainly enjoyed hosting them, it's always neat to see familiar surroundings and activities through new eyes. :)