San Juan Islands

Flying north from Auburn, up Puget Sound, to the east is Everett, Washington, with the Cascade Mountains further east. The white buildings (looking like white streaks on the land) are enormous Boeing hangars at Paine Field where they assemble 747's.


To the west are the Olympic Mountains


Looking southward down Puget Sound, Mt. Rainier on the left and Olympics on the right


To the north are the San Juans, that even look amazing through the spinning propeller. The mountains beyond are in Canada.



It would be quite a different life to only reach your home by water or air.


Departing Orcas Island in the afternoon sun.
Orcas forms a horseshoe, with the airport and the town of Eastsound at the base (to the right in this image). The bay just beyond the hill lies between the two legs of the horseshoe.

On a recent flight to the San Juans, I found some light thermals on the south end of the island. There was a low layer of clouds, so the thermals couldn't go very high. I took a few minutes, reduced the engine to idle and caught the lift that I could. Floating in circles over the farms, some movement caught my eye. I looked across to find 3 young eagles sharing the thermal with me. Not surprisingly, they were doing a lot better job at it than I was. It must have been afternoon off from school, as I looked over to see 15-20 young eagles cavorting in a nearby thermal. Soaring, diving and careening around each other. Much like kids on a playground.