Orcas Island Trip

What a wonderful time we had. We all had the best time relaxing and enjoying the views. If you have not been to San Juan Islands, Washington, I recommend that you plan a trip. Ed and I have been to San Juan Island but only on a day trip. But once we saw how beautiful it is, we decided we had to take a longer trip to see the sights!

Jessica Wellman, my sister, came to visit us in Oregon. She is also a photographer. (You can check out her work by clicking here.) One of the things that I have wanted to do since we moved to Oregon was go on a whale watching tour. So when Jessica said she was coming for a visit, we were going to go see the whales!

Orcas Island was the perfect choice for us to visit. We rented the Willow Cottage at Cabins on the Point. It was very nice to stay at a house with all the amenities of home. We brought most of our food to the island to keep us from eating out at every meal. We did find a great place to eat called the Island Skillet. They had great food for great prices!

Our whale trip with Outer Island Excursions was so much fun! It was a 4 hour tour that started in Eastsound, Washington which is on the Northernmost point of Orcas Island. It did not take long for us to find the whale pod. There were 4 whales in the transient pod that we followed. The resident pod in the Puget Sound has over 30 orcas in it. The oldest female in that pod is over 100 years old and was the whale in the Free Willy Movie. According to the guide, when transient pods come into the sound, the resident pods do their deep sea swimming. So, that is why we were following the smaller transient pod of orcas. The orcas did some wonderful surfacing and breaching while we followed as you can see by the pictures. I wish we had gotten closer to them. In the US, boats are forced to stay a distance of 200 yards while Canadian boats can approach at 100 yards.