With the cold, rainy autumn of the Pacific Northwest turning colder and rainier by the week, Rachel and I had to hurry to squeeze in one last kayak-camping trip with the kids before the season closed. Adults of a certain temperament can kayak-camp in the Pacific Northwest all twelve months of the year, but small children cannot.
We took Maya and Leon to Turn Island, one of the many lovely state park islands in the San Juans. We spent the weekend hiking in the forest, playing on the beach, and telling stories in the tent.
Route map. Overnight parking at Jackson Beach is free for boats with boat trailers, but the situation for ordinary cars like ours is ambiguous at best. Luckily, we were not ticketed.
The weather during our launch on Saturday morning was drizzly with a ten-knot wind. The forecast called for slightly worse weather the following day, but not to any alarming degree. I was surprised when a professional guide from a kayak-rental company came bustling across the beach to ask if we were aware of the “gale warning.” We were not, because no such warning existed, and no such gale appeared.
A ten-knot wind might not be strong enough to generate a gale warning, but it was enough to generate chop in North Bay. Our rudderless, barge-like folding kayaks did not appreciate these conditions. The kayaks protested by pointing their noses toward shore at every opportunity, rather than out into the channel where we wanted them to go. As a result, we ended up hugging the shoreline more closely than I had intended. Our wind-blown, shore-bound route did give us more opportunities to look at wildlife, which was abundant this time of year on the inland waters.
Kids kayaking under dock at Jackson Beach. I had worried the kids would get cold in the rain and wind, but they insisted they liked it.
Rachel kayaking North Bay. A slow-moving flood ushered us northward toward Turn Island.
Rachel kayaking off Pear Point. Small tideraces formed in the vicinity of each of the points between Jackson Beach and Turn Island, but they never posed any threat.
Kids in the kayak, headed northward up San Juan Channel. Rachel and I kept our eyes open for whales but did not see any.
Heermann’s gulls, Danger Rocks. What spectacular red bills!
Short-billed gull, Reef Point. This species and the glaucous-winged were the most abundant gulls this trip, followed by the Heermann’s and California gulls.
We were the only party camping on Turn Island this weekend, so we picked the site with the loveliest views and the most robust shelter against the southeast wind. The rain let up shortly after we arrived, so we went for a hike all the way around the island. Maya and Leon charged ahead and almost immediately disappeared from view. Rachel and I followed more slowly, but we could not find the kids. Could they have gotten lost? Rachel and I split up to circumnavigate the island in opposite directions.
The kids were not lost. They had wandered down a side trail to one of the beaches, where they discovered a ready-made driftwood fort. They took possession at once, and it was easy to see why they would. This was a large and amazingly well-constructed driftwood fort, easily big enough for grownups to play inside, which the kids insisted we do.
Maya and Leon inside driftwood fort. It is surprising we were ever able to lure them out of here.
Maya inside driftwood fort. Maya was eager to play the “Chips Game,” in which her little brown dog hides somewhere on the island for everyone else to find.
Leon and driftwood fort. At age three, Leon was strong enough to make it all the way around the island under his own power.
Alex, Leon, and Maya atop granite boulder. This boulder is likely a “glacial erratic,” left behind from the age when ice covered the land to a depth of thousands of feet.
Leon in lichen field. The dry climate of the San Juans is perfect for lichens.
Rachel and Pacific madrone. The madrones are one of the highlights of the San Juans.
Bark of Pacific madrone. Maya liked to peel back the bark to reveal the many layers, each a different color and texture than the last.
View of Upright Channel from Turn Island. A few other kayakers appeared on day paddles, but no other kayakers spent the night.
Rachel and kids overlooking channel. Maya spotted harbor porpoises, but she was the only one to see them.
Alex and Rachel in camp. One of our camp stoves broke, its threads corroded to dust by saltwater, but we had fortuitously brought along a spare.
Sunset over San Juan Channel. Watching a sunset in the San Juans more often means admiring the changing colors of the clouds than watching the solar disk dip below the horizon.
The raccoons raided our campsite all night. They managed to reach our garbage sack suspended from a tree branch, forcing me into action at midnight. I hurled sticks, stones, and curses—all equally impotent against the enemy—until I finally found a suitably high branch to hang the sack out of their reach. They were still lingering in the morning, watching our every move in hopes we might drop something edible.
The weather on Sunday morning was not worse than on Saturday, as I had been expecting; it was significantly better. The wind died to nothing, the clouds cleared away. Even the flooding current seemed not to slow us down too badly, although we did have to paddle hard through certain narrow channels between the mainland and the offshore rocks. At one point, I was hugging the shore so closely that I ran hard aground on a rock and was barely able to escape without help.
My misadventure with the rock left Rachel to paddle ahead on her own. As she rounded Pear Point, she was confronted by a large, aggressive, male Steller sea lion. He reared out of the water, exposing his chest, as he sized her up for a duel. From my vantage, I could not tell whether Rachel had noticed her challenger, but she assured me afterward that she had. He first popped up a scant five yards from her kayak and exhaled a mighty breath in her direction. There was no question as to who would have won a fight, if it had come to that. The sea lion’s head and neck were the size of Rachel’s entire body. Great though his advantage was, it was not great enough to overcome his coward’s heart. He swam away when he saw that he could not intimidate Rachel. Moral strength had triumphed over physical power, as it so often does.
Raccoon, Turn Island. On a previous visit to Turn Island one summer, the raccoons chewed holes in all my water jugs, forcing me to detour into Friday Harbor to resupply.
Wet raccoon footprints on the hull of a kayak. I caught this animal licking the hull of the kayak, for what purpose I cannot imagine unless the purpose was to be disgusting.
Leon and Maya eating lunch in the kayak. In North Bay, a back eddy allowed us to make forward progress during our break, even though the main stream of the flood was running against us.
Mink at Pear Point. This handsome fellow would peek at us from between the driftwood logs, only to dart away whenever he caught us looking back.
Great blue heron, North Bay. Between the herons, eagles, and vultures, the sky always seemed full of large birds.
Marbled murrelets, North Bay. We saw all four of what I call the “Big Four” alcids (marbled murrelet, pigeon guillemot, rhinoceros auklet, common murre), and unusually, this species was the most numerous of the four.
Rachel kayaking back to Jackson Beach. We made such fast time back to the beach that we caught an earlier ferry than the one we had reserved.
Turn Island is often overlooked in favor of the larger, flashier camping islands such as Sucia or Jones Island. I myself had only camped here one time previously. Turn Island deserves a higher profile than that. We found it to be the perfect distance, the perfect size, and the perfect habitat for our final autumn family camping trip.
—Alex Sidles