Engaged in the San Juans!!

Well this past weekend was one I will remember forever.

All the pictures here (click me)

After a crazy week of work, going to see Pearl Jam (awesome show!!), having dinner with friends down at the lake, working more, cooking out with Laura and Dan at their house, and then working more, being crazy busy with life in general..... whew.... well I surprised Natalie with an overnight trip to the San Juan Islands.

Natalie knew we were going somewhere but I did not tell her where. To be honest, until Thursday I was not even sure where we were going. I had quite a few plans up in the air but it all came together perfectly in the end and I managed to grab a reservation for Saturday night.

After a nice night out downtown with just the two of us Natalie and I woke up to the alarm clock beeping away at 6:30am Saturday morning. We managed to roll out of bed, grab our stuff and be driving away from the house by 7. We headed an hour and a half up I5 to anacortes and caught the ferry over to Orcas Island.

This was our first time into the San Juans and I have to say I was blown away. If you took western north carolina and flooded it with an ocean it might look similar. The ferry ride was a little over an hour and when we pulled off of the ferry we were in paradise. We stopped at a little b&b/restaurant for lunch. After enjoying a great lunch and a tasty beer while looking over the harbor we hopped back in the car and headed off down the island.

We took a little detour up to the top of mt constitution (highest point on the island at 2000ish feet). From the top you could see the san juans stretching out to the ocean, mt baker peeking up above the clouds, and Victoria BC just to the west of us.

After oooing and ahhhing for a while we hopped back into the car and headed down the road to Doe Bay Resort which I have no other way to describe except that it is a hippie resort. Many of you may be thinking at this point of dirty smelly people driving a VW bus that was hand painted but this is not what I mean. Everyone was super friendly, showered, but the place had a cool community feel to it. There were a mix of camping sites, cabins, and my personal favorites the domes and yurts. We had a dome reserved which is essentially just that, a canvas dome up on a wooden platform with a bed over by a window. We were overlooking a bay that looked out into the north sound of Orcas Island.

So we got all of our stuff moved into our dome and walked over to our picnic table which looked back into the bay. We saw a little seal swimming around down there and watched him for a while. Well while Natalie was checking out the seal I snuck the ring out of my pocket. She turned around and started crying instantly. After quite a bit of crying and smiling she said, "I did say yes right because the answer is yes!!".

We spent the rest of the afternoon taking it easy sitting in chairs overlooking the bay and saying wow a whole lot. Natalie checked out the ring in every type of light we found. I loved looking away from the bay and catching her just staring at the ring. We are both so excited but vowed not to talk about how, when or where we were going to get married that weekend so we could just enjoy the moment.

After a while we headed to the hot tub. Everything in the resort faced the water and we soaked away any stress we might have had left from the week while we watched the sun sink into the water. Ahhhhh....

After dark we changed and headed over to dinner which was made from all local organic produce (most grown on site) and it was amazing. Natalie had a salmon dish that was fantastic and I had some artichoke ravioli (the chef would probably hate me calling it ravioli but I forgot the real name). We agreed it was easily one of the top 5 meals we have ever had.

We were pretty wiped out after dinned but managed to walk down to the water and stare are the moonlight on the bay for a few minutes before the cold got to us. We headed back to the dome and loaded on the covers before passing out.

In the morning it was hard to get up. The air was so nice and cool and clean and the bed was toasty warm. Eventually we pried ourselves from the bed and headed over for breakfast. Breakfast was just as good as dinner the night before and I found myself eating even though I was full just because I did not want to leave anything that good behind. We took our coffee down to the bay and hung out for a bit not wanting the weekend to end.

Eventually we had to head back to reality and it settled on quickly when we barely made the ferry. I had to work that night so I had to be back if it meant I had to swim. We had a backup plan in place where if we did not make it onto the ferry I was going to jump out of the car, run onto the ferry (leaving poor Natalie to wait 2.5 hours for the next one) and then I was going to catch a ride with some complete strangers that I met and had agreed to give me a lift. Luckily it all worked out and we were one of the last cars they could fit on for that run. We went up on deck and had a beer and a pretzel to celebrate our good fortune and to watch the islands roll by.

What a weekend!! So sad that it is over but it is just the beginning of a new chapter in an amazing adventure.