I am fortunate enough to have friends who own a cabin on Lopez island, so we were able to use that as our base for the weekend. We arrived at Michael and Bret's cabin with a bit of daylight left and were greeted by two deer, whose dinner we interrupted, and caught a glimpse of the Olympics in the distance from the cabin window. A lovely night of sitting by the fire, sipping beers and reading books followed.
In the morning, we rose early (by our standards) to head to Orcas, to do a bit of hiking. Skies were partly cloudy when we started the hike up Mt. Constitution from Moran State Park. About an hour into our 3 hour hike we hit show; about 5 inches of it..
We turned around before reaching the summit, due to having to make the ferry back to Lopez (one drawback of the San Juans before Summertime is fewer ferry options for inter-island travel), and realized later we were a very short and mostly flat hike from the top!! We only saw 2 hikers on the trek, and up at the top it was just us. The snow made everything so beautiful and peaceful. Mike really loves his new camera, and got some great snow shots! On the way back to the ferry we went to a few little shops on Orcas, including a cool bookstore and a bike shop.
That night back at the cabin, I made... drum roll please... dinner! Nothing fancy, but we had a lovely dinner (+ more beer) and enjoyed the quiet of the cabin.
On Sunday we slept in and then woke up to a hail storm.. We made a big breakfast and stayed in our PJs until well after noon! We did lots of reading and relaxing (Jennie reading, Mike relaxing- read napping-) Then we headed down to a park where we sipped our coffees while enjoying the beach, before heading to the ferry, bound for Anacortes.
The weekend reminded me how important it is to get away. I read an entire book, and Mike and I spent quality time together without the distractions of school, work, TV, the computer etc. Sometimes packing and planning for time away can be a pain, but it is so worth it to be far from the hurried pace of the city, and forget about lists of 'things to do' that sometimes turn weekends into just an extension of the work week.. I came back feeling truly refreshed.
