I spent the weekend at my favorite place on Earth: Strawberry Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington.
Route map. Tides can be difficult in this area.
Traffic from Seattle was horrible, as one might expect on a Friday afternoon. I got to the launch point at Washington Park, Anacortes about ten minutes before sunset. There wouldn’t be nearly enough time to reach Strawberry Island 4.5 miles north (7 km) before full dark.
It is possible to camp in Washington Park, but you have to pay for it, and worse yet, the campground is overrun on summer weekends with drunken yahoos and their accompanying barking dogs, thumping bass, and shrieking laughter—a truly hellish ordeal.
Luckily, I remembered hearing about a campsite on nearby Burrows Island, just around the corner to the south. There’d be no yahoos there, for sure, if I only had time to get there before dark.
I loaded my boat with frantic speed, running my gear down to the beach and dashing back to the car for more, racing against the fading light. I launched at 8:30, after the sun was below the horizon but still in time to enjoy a glorious sky.
Launch at sunset. Beats the heck out of car-camping.
As I approached Burrows Island from the north, I was confronted with an unbroken, steep, rocky shoreline. To the right, I spotted a lighthouse and headed toward it, hoping to find a beach nearby that the lighthouse keepers might have used back in the days when lighthouses were manned.
There was indeed a beach by the lighthouse, but it was too small for camping and offered no easy access to the uplands. Taking a gamble, I decided to circumnavigate Burrows in the dark, in hopes that I would still be able to recognize the camping beach when I passed it.
I never did find the camping beach. (It turns out it is at Alice Bight, another half mile up the east side.) As the stars came out, I finally stumbled across a private beach at Peartree Bay with a cabin built before the rest of Burrows became public land. There looked to be no one home, so, having nowhere else to go, I set up camp on the gravel beach just below the driftwood line.
I forgot my sleeping pad at home, so I decided to just embrace austerity and lay down under the stars with no tent.
It seemed possible that the cabin’s owners might decide to show up on a beautiful summer Saturday, plus I was in a hurry to get to Strawberry Island, so I left the next morning as soon as the favorable flood tide began. A glassy Rosario Strait greeted me as I rounded the corner, and I drifted north toward Strawberry with scarcely any effort.
Stars and moon over Burrows Island. On clear nights in the San Juans, a flashlight is unnecessary.
Morning near Burrows Island. When the morning sunlight is this color yellow, it’s a sign the coming day will be a hot one.
Burrows Island lighthouse, est. 1906. This lighthouse has seen less of the tender care lavished upon the lighthouses at Lime Kiln, Turn Point, and Patos Island.
Northbound up Rosario Strait, south of Cypress Island. Rosario Strait is where I first learned to work with tides.
Buoy in Rosario Strait. When the current is rushing, it can be dangerous to approach this buoy, but it’s safe when the currents are weak, as here.
As I approached Strawberry Island, I saw a funny sight: huddled on one tiny rock were no less than six species of bird: a pelagic cormorant, a double-crested cormorant, half a dozen Heermann’s gulls (my favorite gull), a California gull, two glaucous-winged gulls, and four surfbirds! Who knows why so many birds would want to crowd together on this one particular rock? There were so many other deserted rocks nearby that looked equally appealing to my human eyes.
Strawberry Island was like its own separate, pocket-sized world. There were mountains to climb—in reality, just fifteen-foot rocks. There were plains to wander—in reality, just a few open patches of dry grass. There was a deep, mysterious forest—which, in reality, can be explored in ten minutes. There was a waterfront—a pebble beach twenty feet wide.
It was like being transported to a living diorama of our planet, with every ecosystem a five-minute walk from every other. Will you sit on the high rocks and survey your surrounds? Will you hide in the cool shade of the woods? Clamber down the cliff to the fjords, where the water laps against the land? A million miniature adventures await.
The cliffs overlooked the serene but wild waters of Rosario Strait. I could sit on the rocks with my feet dangling and watch the porpoises and seabirds forage below me. Although houses were visible in the bay of Cypress Island to the east, the dominant view, especially to the west, was of undeveloped, forested islands and maze-like water channels that twisted in every direction.
I set up camp on the “plains” overlooking the water and again slept under the stars.
Approaching Strawberry Island. The dirty brown, rocky cliffs are characteristic of the San Juans.
Setting up camp on Strawberry Island. This is my favorite campsite in the world.
Exploring the forest on Strawberry Island. Madrones and Douglas-fir are the dominant species.
Reading atop Strawberry Island. This is a reliable spot for observing harlequin ducks and black oystercatchers.
Sunset on Strawberry Island. In August, it’s common for wildfires to cast a haze over the San Juans that becomes most visible during sunset.
Another kayaking party did arrive in the late afternoon, to my annoyance, but they turned out to be well-behaved campers. They kept their noise down, didn’t camp right on top of me, and in general were about as pleasant as fellow campers can be.
If you have to share your favorite place on earth with strangers, it’s nice to share it with strangers who are respectful of its beauty and peace. Better still, they left early the next morning.
On Sunday, I dawdled as long as I could, extracting every minute of time on my island. Eventually, the ebbing tide and sinking sun meant it was time to paddle back to Washington Park and get in my car. I took a last tour through the mountains, forests, and plains, then headed down to the waterfront to pack.
A slow ebb dragged me southward, back to the full-size world.
—Alex Sidles