Moran State Park

This Labor Day weekend we did our traditional trip up to Moran State Park on Orcas Island. We went up with Carolyn and Njord. We decided to go Saturday to Tuesday to hopefully miss some of the traffic on the usual travel days. Our plan worked! (: We had decent weather Saturday and Sunday. It wasn't hot, but it was warm, as long as you stayed in the sun, and the nighttime didn't get AS cold as they predicted, but was still chilly. We went old school and took the tent. The park is pretty tight for trailers, although people do bring them. We also didn't want to have to pay the additional surcharge our pop-up would have incurred over the utility trailer we did take.
We packed lunch stuff and had ourselves a nice spread on the trip over to Orcas. Carolyn and Njord quickly found out the downside of holding a toddler eating peanut butter and jelly!

We went on a hike on Sunday. We thought we would find something shortish and hopefully something Alistair could walk most of. Wishful thinking there. After 20 minutes he was tired and wanted a ride. So we put him in the backpack Seth carried - it is rated up to 65 pounds. Poor Seth! I had Gillian in the soft-sided carrier on my back, but would have much rather carried her in the other pack! Oh well!

As we made our way up the trail, we kept thinking we were almost there. Once we got to the "top" we were sorely disappointed to find an elevation and not one view, just more trees! Oh well. The trail was pretty with lots of thistle and foxgloves. We also saw 3 or 4 deer. In the end, we ended up hiking about 7 miles! We would not recommend this hike unless you were doing it as part of the larger loop it can be part of!

Monday morning we got up to drizzle. It started raining sometime in the night and it was still doing so when we got up.

We built a fire, made coffee and hot chocolate and huddled around the fire while we planned our day. Alistair really wanted to go to the top of Mt. Constitution. So we got breakfast made, tucked everything away to keep dry and headed out.

We were the only car in the parking lot at Mt. Constitution, if you can image that! We made our way to the tower and were greeted by pelting cold rain and wind. The view was not what we were used to up there!

We got up to the top of the tower and ducked into the lookout area where it was dryish and not windy. We look like we are dressed for camping in November, not August/September!

Despite the yucky conditions, the kids still had fun!

We spent the majority of the morning and early afternoon taking a driving tour of Orcas. We took a wrong turn and ended up on Westsound instead of Deer Harbor. Nobody could take it anymore and needed to get out to stretch legs, get a snack and some fresh air. We decided to head back to Eastsound for some actual food - although the wheat bread dipped in peanut butter wasn't too shabby!

Gillian had had it! While at lunch, we kicked around the idea of leaving and found a ferry schedule to see what our options were. We walked around Eastsound after lunch and then headed back to our sites to see what was going on there. We arrived to find both our dining canopy and tarp over the trailer heavily drooping with water. Seth made the statement, "nobody is going to give us a medal for sticking it out!" We decided to pack up and make the 8:35pm ferry.

After pulling everything out of our tent, we found a nice puddle of water in the corner of the tent under the pack and play. I can only imagine how much larger it would have been the next morning after it rained all night!

The trailer also was wet and had wicked water about a foot up the boards! We packed stuff in neatly and threw a bunch of wet stuff in on top. We got the tarp all bungeed on and were off. Halfway to the ferry Alistair got sick and we had to stop to clean up the mess. Leaving the island that day ended up being a blessing in disguise!

After a good night's sleep in a dry bed, Carolyn and Njord came over for breakfast and to help get everything pulled out and dried out. It took us a few hours to get everything pulled out and hung up. We had fans running all day in the garage to aid in the drying process.

Our garage looked like an outdoor store for used equipment!

Carolyn and Njord came back over in the afternoon to get everything taken down, folded up and put away. We had dinner and toasted to the end of a fun trip despite the early departure!