Anacortes, the last morning

Friday, August 14, 2020

The photo above is from the day I arrived here, my very first day here … just so we don’t forget how gorgeous it is here, and so I pay attention to what I’m leaving.

During the first year or two that I took the trailer camping, on the last morning of each trip, I always simply hitched up and drove home. But during more recent camping trips, if the weather was nice on the last morning, I often ignored the need to leave and jumped in the truck and took one last peek around the area where I had been camping, then came back to the campground and hitched up and headed home.

Today, this morning was so beautiful. I jumped in the truck for one more quick look at one more thing.

With just the truck (without the trailer in tow), I drove up to Cap Sante for a quick look around. Here’s a map of where I was …

The RED star on the left was where I was camped. The RED arrow on the right points to Cap Sante. Cap Sante is an impressive, imposing high rock bluff that you can drive up onto and walk around on and see for miles and miles in almost every direction. You can look to the west over the town of Anacortes, south over Fidalgo Bay, you can look east to the Cascade Mountains, or northeast to see dozens more islands. Spending a few hours up on Cap Sante shouldn’t be missed if you ever come here.

I knew I had to hitch up the trailer and get out of the campground by 1pm, so I didn’t have a lot of time to spend, but even a short visit here this morning was more than worth the effort.

I parked up on the top of Cap Sante and walked to the west edge of the bluff … view above. There was Anacortes spread out before me, with the Cap Sante Marina in the foreground (I’ve been in there by boat a number of times), and, you may notice, the San Juan Islands in the far distance. What a view.

The Cap Sante Marina always has room for lots of transient boats … folks who are traveling through the area but need some place to tie their boat to a dock for the night, or 2-3 nights, a place to get fuel and/or propane, walk to the a nearby grocery store, etc. It’s a very nice marina.

I turned more to the left, to the southwest to find another large marina (photo above), and a bit past that there is a haul-out facility where you can do work on your boat (or have work done on your boat) while the boat is out of the water. Notice all the boats anchored in the bay … just anchored. People can anchor out for free, otherwise they would have to pay to come into the Cap Sante Marina and tie to a dock. The large marina you see in the photo above is private, no transient over-night moorage there.

And then I turned more to the left, to the southeast.

That white plume of moisture/steam in the middle of the photo above was from the Anacortes Oil Refinery that is located on a peninsula away from the downtown Anacortes area. The internet tells me this refinery is owned by a company called Marathon (they purchased this refinery in 2018), but I seem to remember that it used to be called the Texaco refinery. Either way, it has a crude oil capacity of about 119,000 barrels of crude oil every day of the year. It processes oil mostly from Canada, North Dakota, and Alaska, though some comes in from overseas, and it then produces gasoline, distillates, heavy fuel oil, and propane.

The photo above (looking due east) shows the end of the docks (on the right) at the oil refinery … and one very large blue-hulled oil tanker at anchor. Notice all of the small boat traffic in the area. There’s LOTS of small boat traffic in this area. This area is an intersection of several “avenues” as it were, for recreational boats traveling to/from the San Juan Islands, Bellingham, La Conner, and south to/from Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma, and all of Puget Sound.

There was a major oil spill from this refinery a few years ago, and I hate that, especially where the water and wildlife are concerned. But I have to remember that I depend on this “oil business” every time I drive somewhere, every time I buy something online and have it delivered, even if I go to the store and buy something there and not have it delivered directly to me, because pretty much everything is delivered to stores by vehicles that use petroleum products … trucks, trains, airplanes. Even those folks who own fully electric vehicles use petroleum products (petroleum is used to build the vehicle, and used in wheel bearings and transmission oil, and brake fluid, axle joint lubrication, steering gear box lubrication, etc). If we want to move around faster than by horse-carriage, then we are dependent on petroleum, and oil refineries.

But, THAT is another topic for another day!

Let’s keep looking around from the top of Cap Sante on this gorgeous day and see what else we can see.

Ahhh, the view above was beautiful. I was looking northeast from my spot on the top of Cap Sante. The large island is Hat Island.

The small island to the left is Dot Island, and the land to the very left of that is yet another island called Saddlebag Island. No one lives on Dot Island, its shores are very steep, solid rock bluffs, no boat can moor there, no one lives there, but the United States Post Office lists it with zip code 98221. Hmmm, ok.

Saddlebag Island, on the other hand (on the very left side of the photo above), is a Marine State Park in Washington State. It has no dock or mooring buoys, but one of the bays offers plenty of anchorage space in nice weather. And people can kayak to the island or come over on a small boat that can be beached, and then folks can tent-camp on the island.

The opportunities in the State of Washington for all kinds of boating and camping are immense and the environment is so very impressive.

So, then, I turned a bit further to the left (while standing on the top of Cap Sante) and then I saw just trees … the trees that are on the top of Cap Sante when I faced north … no view at all. So I walked back to my big white truck and figured I was heading back to the trailer and would head home.

But … THIS little person was sitting right behind my truck such that one of the exhaust pipes was aimed right at her, and I didn’t really want to bother her. I stood there a bit, spoke a few words, but she didn’t answer me. She just stared at me and kept on nibbling away on thistle leaves. I thought rabbits surely wouldn’t eat thistle leaves because I thought the leaves must cause pain … the sharp pointy things in the leaves. But this gal was munching away. And she really did just sit there and stare at me while she munched. So I took her picture and just waited until she was done.

 

 

 

 

Eventually she finished her snack and ambled back into the shrubbery. And then I jumped in the big white truck and headed back towards the campground.

BUT, I decided to stop one last time right near the ferry dock to Guemes Island, just to walk on the beach a bit. No one else was there, just me and the beach grass, and the seaweed and the rocks and the water, and a few seagulls overhead.

 

For me, it’s so peaceful around water like this. It seemed appropriate to stop here and say “thank you” for all that I had seen and done on Fidalgo Island.

And then, I drove back to Washington Park campground to get my trailer and head out towards home.

 

I had a little lunch, then hitched up and headed out. In fact, I pulled out of my campsite about 2 minutes before 1pm, I made the deadline by the skin of my teeth! 🙂

What a super week. I’ll be back for sure.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope you’ve had a joyful and peaceful and wonderful Christmas. For those of you who don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope you’ve had the same lately … a joyful, peaceful, and wonderful time. My very best to everyone!