Kelly and I typically don’t splurge on stuff. We’ve got a modest house and reliable cars and generally spend money wisely. One luxury we do enjoy, however, is travel. I’d live in a shoebox if it meant I could see new places (and I did just that when I called the USS Elliot home for three years).
We don’t go to faraway places every year but decided this year was the time. I rounded up a mess of frequent flier miles and set a course for the farthest place they’d take us: Washington state. Yes, we returned to the glorious San Juan Islands after a seven year absence.
The trip didn’t begin on a good note, as I got sick before we even left. Fortunately, I rallied and we all enjoyed the rest of the trip. It was a fantastic vacation in nearly every way.
I normally like to link to highlights for these recaps but this trip was full of too many of them and I blogged it extensively. If you’d like to walk down memory lane with me, you can start with my first vacation post on July 29th and click the upper right link to go through to the last one.
How did you manage to discover Orcas in the first place? Was that a honeymoon trip?
My wife and I were in Raleigh on 12/31 but we understood from your blog that you were in Warrenton or we would have tried to meet up with you. Instead we left Raleigh at 3 PM and drove through to Vernon NJ (Via the western route through Harrisburg, PA) arriving at 1:30 AM. We weren’t that far from Warrenton but figured we didn’t want to interrupt a family vacation.
Perhaps next time or maybe your next splurge will bring you to FL or you will have some work up in NW NJ.
Ron Kinner
Yes, we went to Orcas as a belated honeymoon trip in 2000.
D’oh! We were indeed around on the 31st. Sorry we missed a chance to meet! I’ll let you know when I travel to NJ or FL again.