-Tuesday July 3rd Morning-
The Day dawns cloudy and misty, but undaunted we set set off for the south end of the island to do a geocache or two. We drove as far as we could on that end of island and were going to go find Cape Cache work our way back to Friday Harbor. As we drove it was sprinkling lightly, but when we parked to caching it started to come down heavier than we wanted to endure just to find an ammo can.
We turned around and drove about a mile back and the rain eased back to its previous drizzle level so we stopped, thinking of walking on a trail along the coast to the Cattle Point Light. Drizzle, wind and mid fifties temps sent us back to the car after about 100 yards of trail. As we drove up the hill away from Cattle Point I pulled over and took a couple photos of the light.
Next stop was the American Camp of the San Juan Island National Historical Park. By now it had stopped misting so we headed out for hike on the park’s trails. We visited Grandma’s Cove and then promptly missed our turn for the trail to South Beach ending up at the site of the actual American Camp. We did still manage to get a couple miles of walking in anyway.
We never did make it back to the British Camp on the north part of the Island that we briefly poked our head into last night. The reason for these two camps had to do with the wording of an 1846 treaty between the US and England setting the boundaries between the two counties and in 1859 brought them to the brink of war once again over the killing of a pig.
Because we are already planning a week’s visit next year and would like a quieter place to stay, right after leaving the park’s borders we see a sign for the Olympic Lights B & B. We wanted something a little further from the road, well this one certainly fits that requirement, it is behind a gate and is about a 1/4 mile down a private one-lane road. We invite ourselves inside and met the inn keepers and like what we see, so this might be the place for 2013.
After leaving the B & B, Donna realized we were only a few hundred feet from a geocache. The rain had quit, so we thought, “What the heck.”I parked the car and we bushwacked into the wet weeds. As we wandered deeper into the woods I realized that even though the rain had quit we were not to be spared getting soaked. Once at ground zero we made short work of finding the container and signing the log. By the time we got back to the car after wading through the knee high weeds our jeans were soaked all the way up to the pockets. So we headed back to the guest house to take a break and change into some dry clothes.