Today June 11th is Somnath's birthday and boy, am I glad he was born!!! :) Happy Birthday sweetheart! Since his birthday falls on a Monday this year, I planned to 'surprise' him with a trip to Orcas Islands near Seattle over the weekend with a Saturday night overnight stay at the Rosario Resort. Now why is a 'surprise' from me never really a surprise...well, those who know me know that I am not really good at keeping secrets :) Anyway, the past couple of weeks have been very stressful and long as far as work is concerned for dear hubby. So I had to take him to a place that was remote and where our cell phone service was not really that good which meant that he couldnt access internet/voicemail while we were there(well - if he really needed to we could manage :) I dont think there's any place where we cant have wifi)
Saturday afternoon June 9th - We drove from Seattle to Anacortes(about 2 hrs drive) and then took a ferry to Orcas Islands. The San Juan islands comprise of four islands - Lopez, Shaw, Orcas and Friday Harbor(there might be more but the ferry service that we took served these four). True to Seattle's reputation, it was grey and rainy on Saturday. But since it was planned to be a relaxing romantic outing, the mist and rain helped set the mood :) The ferry ride was very nice and it took us about 1 hours and 15 mins to get to Orcas. The resort was another 13 miles away from the ferry terminal and the scenary was beautiful. Lush green meadows, green evergreen trees, white/lavender/pink/orange wildflowers dotting the landscape and lakes that we lost count of while driving. 
We reached Rosario resort only to be greeted by a lot of deer. It seems that years ago the deer swam across islands and came here from mainland. There are no predators on the island other than man and dog and hence the deer population has flourished. We had to drive carefully and I tried to frantically get a few of them to pose for me. Imagine my surprise when I approached a deer slowly hoping to get a good picture before it ran away and this deer coolly walks up to me and sniffs my hand!! Well...I think they are used to humans and are not scared any more. The resort is very beautiful and the room that we got was perfect. It faced the bay(I chose this resort because it had rooms with views facing the bay) and we could hear the waves lap the shores from the patio.
There were hardly any people to be seen although this is a very popular destination - our thoughts were that they were using the spa services offered by the resort. The resort is spread out over acres of land and there were walking trails that took us to the water. We enjoyed our walk on the evening we reached and decided to drive to some nice place for dinner. We drove to the 'downtown' of Orcas islands but found the places there extremely pricey and not really the quaint place that we were looking for. We decided to check out a place called 'Cafe Olga' from one of the brochures that we had picked up on the ferry. It was in the opposite direction from downtown and we had to drive about 7 miles from our resort to get there. But enroute we had to pass through the Moran State Park. It is one of the best state parks that we've seen and later found out that it is one among the 4th largest state parks in the US. It has tons of camping sites, loads of hiking trails and many many lakes. We decided to first have dinner since it was already close to 8pm and reached the Cafe. Cafe Olga is a small restaurant with a hubby/wife team serving a limited number of items. But the food was good - we had scalibut cakes(appetizer with scallops and halibut), grilled halibut and chicken breast stuffed with onions and goat cheese. The food was yummy and we were very happy with our choice of dining that night. On the way back we stopped by Cascade Lake in the Moran state park and enjoyed the quiet twilight scenary.
We planned to take the 10:20am ferry back to Anacortes the next morning so that we could get home in time for our flight to California at 7:30pm. So we decided to have an early start on Sunday to check out Mt. Constitution inside the Moran state park.Sunday June 10th - Its one of the earliest starts to a holiday that we've ever had. We checked out of the resort by 8:15am and drove to Mt Constitution. It has an observation tower from which you can see Vancouver, Victoria BC, all of the San Juan islands, the Olympic mountain ranges etc. Words are not enough to describe the beautiful scenary that we saw from Mt Constitution. We were just in time because we could see the fog set in. We managed to see most of the islands before it was fully shrouded in the fog.
Some historical facts- American President Franklin Roosevelt had created a task force in the 4th year of the Great Depression for conserving the natural resources of the US that led to the creation of several state and national parks. In 1933, when unemployment was rampant and people were finding it difficult to get jobs and feed themselves, Roosevelt created the task force that comprised of young men b/w the ages of 18-22 yrs who were paid $25 a month($20 sent to their families directly by the government and $5 given to the young men every month). This $5 was a big fortune for the young men during the difficult times and this job helped keep up their morale. The task force started with 1 person enlisting in April 1933 and by Aug 1933 there were 125,700 people who had enlisted. Something that made me think - this is an ideal example of something really good(and lasting - enjoyed for years later by us) coming out of an hopeless situation!
Reached the ferry terminal at 9:40am well in the recommended 45 mins prior to departure timeframe only to be told that the ferry was full and we would have to take the 1:55pm ferry instead. How do we pass time - go back to Moran park or stay in the queue? We chose the latter since missing the 1:55pm would guarantee we couldnt fly to CA in the evening. So didnt leave the queue, instead parked the vehicle in the queue and went to a small cafe overlooking the ferry terminal/bay called Mamie's Lunch&Breakfast for a hearty breakfast. Got back to the car - listened to an audio book, dozed until 1:00pm to catch up on the beauty sleep and then got onto the ferry back to Anacortes. Used years of training as a travelling consultant to pack for our CA trip in 20 mins flat and drove to the airport and flew out. Sea-land-air...all modes of travel used within a span of an afternoon/evening. Phew!! :)