saturday morning kayak to vashon island

nothing wakes you up like a early morning kayak!

we set out to kayak over to vashon island from our little neighborhood-puget sound-side park; seahurst park.


here is the pattern that we laid out, and what we kayaked. in all, it was about8.5 miles of beautiful puget sound!


what an absolute majestic view of mt rainier. when you're at water level, it looks massive!


brooke enjoyed watching the ferries in the distance.


we also got to see a seal and "baby orca whales." [note: we actually couldn't see what they were, although they were jumping in the distance and looked like baby orca whales, we can not confirm this].

safely back on shore. what a great paddle! next time i think we'll head out to blake island, which is a little further. maybe we'll over night!

Vashon Island: Ducks and Coffee Shops

with nothing much planned this weekend, we took advantaged of the empty time to head over to Vashon Island. we left early [for us] in the morning to catch the ferry. i [brooke] love our impromptu day trips; not much planning and a whole lot of improvision. we always seem to find things that we never thought/planned we'd see. take for instance, the original boeing airplane company's red barn.

while on vashon island, we looked around the 'towns' of vashon and burton. there are a few shops that sell various knick-knacks. andrea found a mug of her own!


we also found this cool little boat ramp park with two charming ducks. if you don't know, my wife loves many things...one of them being ducks!


we hung out here for a while, trying to lure these two mallards into our car to take home...at least that was andrea's plan!

after a few photos, we decided it was time to retreat to the car and move on; but the ducks followed!


there was something about this mallard that just melted our hearts. she had a slight limp and fell a lot, but seemed very happy to be a duck.


on our way back to the ferry we stopped at a coffee shop/antique store. although we weren't ready for our 'coffee house time,' we thought we'd have a look-see in the antiques. as i moved towards a misson style floor lamp, my eyes saw what was standing in the corner behind it: a greenland style kayak paddle. a sought after kayak paddle, this one was handmade and only thirty bucks... and it was meant for me!

crumby picture, i know...it's hard to photograph an object that's eight
feet by four inches. check out more examples here.

we finished our day by hanging out at cafe luna and reading some books and magazines. we're planning on hitting up vashon island again in the spring when it's not so cold to bike a 32 mile loop around the island.