Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Anniversary Trip - Day 1


Finally, something interesting to blog about! That and I have some time off from my clinical rotations so now I have time to blog... Anyhow, the hubs and I just recently got back from our anniversary trip! We trekked out to Friday Harbor, in honor of our "mini-moon" after our wedding last June (well then why are you going in August you ask? that is a story for another day! our wedding day was June 7th but we celebrate our anniversary on August 1st...we're weird, I know). So here is the recap of our adventures (and some pics, though between the fact that we aren't good at remembering to take pictures, and editing out the personal ones, there aren't a whole lot!).

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to hit the road early. Actually, I got up bright and early while Mr. B snoozed because he had been called into work last night and didn't get home until the wee hours of the morning. So I continued my bustling about and getting everything ready - I'd spent the night before cleaning and packing up, and baking some cookies to take with us. I tell you what, we are going to need a u-haul to travel when we have kids! Taking the dog requires packing up his bag with food, toys, treats, leashes (oh I long for the day that we can just clip a leash to his regular collar and be off! no more humane contraptions to avoid strangling while walking) and other miscellaneous travel items (portable water dish, water bottle to fill said dish, backpack - yes, he has his own backpack). And then, we have to fold up his crate and bring that, along with his blanket. I swear, the dog had more things than we did! But anyhow, once I had everything coordinated other than husband personal items, I woke up the hubs himself. I find getting up awake and out of bed to be terribly low yield and annoying, but apparently giving him a 5 minute countdown until I let the Beast in to wake him up the wet and cold dog nose way is very effective.

We (well, I, considering that I orchestrated the entire event) were aiming for an 8:45am launch time, and we left at about 9am which was pretty impressive. However, we couldn't go straight up to the ferry, we had to stop at the bank first. One of the joys of being an apartment manager is that you are not only at the beck and call of your tenants 24/7 (supposedly) but also taking care of rent. And we had planned our lovely trip over the beginning of the month, so we had to be crafty in our rent depositing so as to not get behind on our 24 hour deposit rule. Since the 1st was a Sunday, and thus we couldn't deposit rent that day, it actually helped us out a bit (and also thanks to all of our wonderful tenants who pay rent early, bless you!). So at any rate, after making sure that we had the building phone forwarded to our cell (that's right, oh lovely tenants and potential-tenants, we answered your calls while we were watching for orcas! that's dedication right there) and our back up building entry plan in place (while electronic card entry may be high tech and secure, you would be amazed at the frequency people forget their cards or they stop working...and we're not even getting to the power failure issues!) we then hit the bank to deposit some checks. The Beast was a bit disappointed that I left him in the car while I ran in - he has all the businesses memorized that give him treats, and this Bank of America is in the Beast Fan Club!

Now that we had our work taken care of, it was off to the races to get to the ferry terminal! You would think that there would be a passenger/vehicle ferry that leaves from Seattle to Friday Harbor, but no, we had to drive up to Anacortes, which is about a 1.5 hr drive. We've done it several times so you think we would have the drive down, but when we hit Mt. Vernon we both start having flash backs of getting lost, prompting a frantic discussion of remembering past mistakes so as not to repeat them. Luckily, we remembered that the Mt. Vernon calamity was while locating the tulip fields, not the route to the ferry terminal, and that our ferry terminal direction issues happened in Anacortes - so we were still a go for now. And magically, once we hit Anacortes, the intersection of great confusion had actually been redesigned as a fancy roundabout and was perfectly logical to get to the terminal! Imagine that - traffic revision that actually makes sense. We were quite impressed. We were also very impressed with ourselves when we pulled up to pay our ferry fare and found out that we would make the ferry that we were aiming for!

Anyone who has ever ridden any of these ferries knows that actually making your intended ferry is an art (especially now with budget cuts and less scheduled ferry runs). To guarantee that you make your intended ferry (other than being a fancy commuter with privileges you pay for) you pretty much need to get to the terminal right when the prior ferry finishes boarding. Well actually, to guarantee you make your ferry you walk on, because I have yet to encounter a vehicle ferry that fills up with people! But we're talking about folks with wheels here (that would be us). Anyhow, if you take that approach then you are stuck at the terminal for maybe 3-4 hours. Granted, the Anacortes ferry terminal has a lovely beach to walk on,
but there are other things you probably want to do with your time other than kill time at the ferry terminal. So then the art comes into play - you need to factor in the day of the week, if there are any holidays (if you are heading to an island on a Friday of a 3 day weekend, you will need to camp out for the required hours if you have any hope!), how many ferry runs there are that day and how desirable you think your run is, what the weather is like (if it's supposed to rain on the island, or if it's supposed to rain in town and not on the island) and what your horoscope tells you in the paper that morning. At any rate, we got to the terminal a little over an hour ahead of time and made the ferry with plenty of time to spare! So the Beast got lucky and we took a leisurely walk along the beach and he got to smell lots of seaweed and a few dogs too. Soon after that we were loaded up and heading off to San Juan Island!


(Note: due to lack of photos, these pictures were snagged from the interwebs thanks to google - don't worry, there will be some pictures of our actual trip yet to come!)

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