The folks on this week’s four-day sea kayak tour were in for a treat last night when a band of Outdoor Odysseys guides along with owner and founder Clark Casebolt showed up at their campsite on Jones Island to surprise the tour leader and birthday girl, Sarah Young. The group left San Juan Island in the afternoon and paddled out to Jones, armed with pizza, ice cream, cake, balloons, and a whole host of other goodies. They spent the night on Jones Island along with Sarah and her guests and returned to San Juan Island this morning, in time to…
Friday Harbor Art Market
As the first of September approaches, so does your last chance to check out the weekly Friday Harbor Art Market! As of this summer, the San Juan Islands Agricultural Guild has begun hosting a weekly art market on Thursdays from 5 to 8 PM in downtown Friday Harbor, at Brickworks at 150 Nichols Street. Every week, local artists and musicians gather at Brickworks, an outdoor plaza located just blocks from the ferry landing, for an evening of music, art, and community. Situated amidst all of the shops and restaurants of Friday Harbor, the Art Market is a perfect place to…
Vacationing in the San Juan Islands
Come out to San Juan Island and join us for a sea kayaking trip to see why the San Juan Archipelago is the little-known jewel of the Pacific Northwest!
End of August
It’s been a nearly perfect week here on San Juan Island, both off the water and on. The annual San Juan County Fair began on Wednesday, and Friday Harbor has been packed with visitors. The weather, which has been less than ideal for much of the summer, has finally turned nice. The whales have been out in full force on the west side of San Juan Island—yesterday’s sea kayak tour saw a pod of nearly thirty whales around Lime Kiln State Park, and just this morning we got word that there was a pod of around sixty Orcas traveling north…
News from the Garden!
After a coolish spring and summer, the Outdoor Odysseys garden located on the outskirts of Friday Harbor, San Juan Island is finally coming into full bloom! We continue to have organic zucchini, squash, rhubarb, basil, and several varieties of lettuce to send out on our overnight trips, and just a few days ago we harvested a number of cherry tomatoes and the first of our cucumbers. The larger tomatoes and lemon cucumbers are looking quite promising as well. All should be ripe within the next week! Join us for one of our sea kayaking trips and sample some of our…
Butterflies on San Juan Island
For such small and relatively isolated islands, the San Juans boast a variety of unique historical, geographical, and biological features. As I near the end of my first summer on San Juan Island, I continue to be amazed by the new things I learn about the San Juan Islands everyday. Aside from the Orca whales, bald eagles, and other unique types of birds and marine life that inhabit this area, San Juan Island is home to another rare species: the Island Marble butterfly, thought to have gone extinct for nearly 100 years before turning up in American Camp, a National…
Island Hopping in the San Juans
This past week, I had a friend in town who was visiting the San Juan Islands for the first time. Wanting to show her as much of the islands as possible (and wanting to do a bit of exploring myself!) I decided to take the opportunity to visit a couple of the other islands in the San Juans. The Washington State Ferry, which runs between Anacortes and Friday Harbor, also provides service to three other islands in the San Juan archipelago: Orcas, Lopez, and Shaw. Of the four islands served by the ferry, San Juan is the most populated, Orcas…
Tucker the Poop-Sniffing Dog
Last week on one of our “Eagles and Orcas” one-day sea kayak tours, guests were treated to a visit by an extra-special San Juan Islander. “A whale?” you might wonder. Well, guess again. His name is Tucker, and he is not a whale or a person but a black Labrador retriever whose job it is to sniff out whale poop off the coast of San Juan Island. For the past several years, Tucker has worked tirelessly with a team of researchers from the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology. Their goal? To find and collect samples of whale dung…
“Island Exploration” Tour
Beginning this summer, Outdoor Odysseys will be offering a brand new “Island Exploration” day tour on San Juan Island, where guests will have the opportunity to sample some of the best things that the island has to offer. We’ll spend the day exploring our favorite local spots, including Mount Finlayson, Lime Kiln Point State Park, and the Pelindaba Lavender Farm, and we’ll finish the day with wine tasting at San Juan Vinyards or cider and gin tasting at Westcott Bay Cider.
Summertime on San Juan
As June draws to a close on San Juan Island, summer continues to pick up speed. Last week brought some sunny weather to the island and live music at The Doctor’s Office (a coffee shop—not an actual medical center), the Rumor Mill, and the San Juan County Fairgrounds. Cask & Schooner, a restaurant and pub in town, celebrated its grand re-opening after a multi-year hiatus, and downtown Friday Harbor was abuzz this weekend with visitors who’d come over on the ferry. We here at Outdoor Odysseys are just as excited as the visitors that the season has begun. This Saturday…