Alpine visitors

For a few days, there were two Alpines parked nose to tail in the driveway. Our good friends Debi and Sandy from California arrived midafternoon on June 1st to visit us after attending the Salem Rally in Oregon.  

Like us, they planned to attend the Nine-day Oregon Coast Rolling Rally next, so it made sense to simply continue a little further north to visit us in Anacortes between rallies.  We would then travel on to the Oregon Coast Rally together.

snug fit but it worked  - the driveway is just long enough

It was good to see them. The last time was in October 2020 in Cape Kiwanda. 

Their Alpine perched on the ramps so they could be level and close to hook ups while our Alpine parked in front of theirs.

For five days, we toured the sights around town, and enjoyed meals on our deck. Debi and I caught up on all manner of sewing chatter and visited the local quilt store in town that she declared to be a treasure trove of fabrics. 

On a particularly spectacular-weather day we signed up for a whale watching tour. However, despite the captain's best efforts to track down the pods that were migrating through the area, we didn't see any whales. We did see beautiful scenery and the white capped peak of Mt Baker, an enormous container ship, and lazy sea lions. 

It turned out that the whales were just across the border in Canadian waters but unfortunately due to COVID and border closure into Canada, we were unable to cross into their maritime space. The reason seems strange: it's not because of exposure to the virus between the invisible maritime borders but in case there were to be an incident with our vessel in their sea space and Canadian rescue teams would need to come to our aid, which would then create an exposure risk to their personnel. Interestingly, Canadian vessels were free to cross into and through our waters. 

But the bottom line is that because of COVID and the Canadian border closure, we were unable to view the whales that were a mere 5 miles north. Debi and Sandy were good sports about the trip there and back to enjoy the scenery on a lovely day.

lighthouse and Mt Baker

We took in the stunning views from Washington Park - 

We browsed the Saturday Downtown Farmer's Market for local produce- 

We poked around in the oldest west coast marine chandlery in town, Marine Supply and Hardware Company. Besides bins of screws, nuts, bolts, and all manner of marine related hardware and tools, one section of the building is devoted to antiques. There is even a case with vintage sewing machines that got Debi's and my attention.

The hanging pots and planters were popping with flower displays - 

Someone had a creative idea for covering an old chair - 

Monday June 6th, we closed up the house and prepared on a Michael-planned itinerary to make our way to the Oregon coast to meet up with the Alpine group for the Oregon Coast Nine-day Rolling Rally -  

hooking up our tow cars as we start on our trip