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…

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…

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…

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…

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…