May 23, 2010 - Lopez Island, Guys Trip & Ladies Cruise

This is a unique boating weekend for Kathy and I.  We are going to be on the water, but on different boats, with no kids.  I'm doing my semi-annual "guy's trip" with my friends from my life before moving to La Conner.  Kathy is going on the Swinomish Yacht Club "Ladies Cruise" with about 20 women on 5 boats.  Our kids will be with a babysitter and friends while we are gone.

I'll start with my guys trip since I left first.  On Friday afternoon my friends drove up from the Bothell/Woodinville area and stopped at Costco to get food and drink for the trip.  They arrived in Shelter Bay around 1:00 in the afternoon.  After several dock carts full of sleeping bags, food, beer, etc. we got underway.  The sun is poking out, there isn't much wind, and it's pretty warm.  We enjoy the ride over to Lopez up on the flybridge in the sun.  We are headed for Watmough Bay on Lopez.  It's off the beaten path of most cruising boats, and the lack of popularity proves beneficial as we end up the only boat in the bay.  

After relaxing and making sure the anchor was set, we dinghy to shore to explore.  We hang out on the beach and climb a few of the boulders, and soak up some sun.

Ryan, Steve, Mike, Ted (and Synergy too)

I don't think a couple of the guys were very motivated to go hiking, but we went anyway.  I warned them that first part would be a bit of a scramble up some quite steep sections of trail.  I don't think they expected it to be as steep and challenging as it was though.  It was a good workout, and worth it.

hiking up to the top of Chadwick Hill

There were some VERY steep and difficult section of trail.  Ward almost didn't make on one particularly difficult section.

Hang on Ward, help is on the way....

Not really so dangerous, at least according to Mike

The BIG payoff for all this hard climbing was the rope swing at the top.  We all took a few turns, and it seemed to bring out the child in each of us.

Ryan gets an "underdog" from Mike

Ryan making sure Ted doesn't hog the swing all day

We hike over to one of my favorite spots in the San Juan's.  The view of Watmough Bay from almost 500' up. 

An awesome view

Since the rope swing made us all feel like 13 year olds, we did a typical 13 year old thing; we threw rocks off the cliff trying to hit the water below.  Most of the rocks disappeared from view and never made a sound.  Sometimes it looked like they would hit the boat, but I don't know if any of them even made it to the water.  In a last ditch effort I found a nice throwing rock and really gave it a try.  I launched that rock so hard that my camera flew out of my unzipped jacket pocket and tried to follow the rock I just threw.  I watched my camera bouncing from rock to rock down the cliff.  It was not in a case.  It stopped about 50' below us on a small ledge.  It still looked intact and I wanted it back.  We surveyed the perch and decided it might not be too hard for me to take a little "path" to the left that ended up pretty close to the camera.  I carefully climbed down the "trail" which wasn't too bad.  I got to the camera and picked it up.  No major external damage other than a small nick on the viewing screen, and a missing battery that keeps the date and time set.  Much to my surprise the lens popped out like normal when I pressed the power button!!!!  After accepting the default date and time of Jan 1 2008 at 12:00AM I took this picture of my friends 50' above me:

It takes a licking and keeps on clicking

I hike back up and we all take a look at the "miracle camera" that survived a tumble down a rock cliff and still worked.  We walk back to the swing and then take the easy trail back to the beach.  The scramble would be really diffucult to go down.  Even so, it's a long downhill, and I think we all felt it in our knees by the time we got to the beach.

more to come.....  Stay Tuned.