searching the san juans

Anders and I just got back from a week long boat trip in the San Juans! We rented a yacht from NW Explorations with our good friends, Bryan and Amber. Bryan took a course to learn how to drive the boat, so we didn't have to have a skipper on board, which worked out great (that would have been awkward otherwise). Stops included: Friday Harbor, Stuart Island, Roche Harber, Sucia Island and Rosario Resort. It was a different kind of trip for Anders and I. Normally we are off to some foreign country, so it was really nice to spend some significant time exploring our backyard. 

Our yacht for the week, the Navigator

Bryan let me drive

 I forgot to take interior shots except for this one of our living room.

 Happy hour on the boat every afternoon

 Anders in a captain's hat

 Prepping crab pots

 Droppin' the pots

 So many seal lions and harbor seals! I eventually just had to stop taking pictures of them.

 We caught some!

 You can only keep crab that are 6 inches, so we had to measure all of them and throw back the females and the small ones

 Plenty of keepers, though

 Hiking around Stuart Island

 Madrona trees have peeling bark and twisted branches

 We saw Orcas!!

While we caught plenty of crabs, the only fish we caught was this bitty baby!

Sucia!

kayaking halong bay

Anders and I went kayaking when we were in Halong Bay in Vietnam. One of the other travelers on the trip took a few pictures of us from his kayak and just sent them to us! It was really a nice surprise considering I had so many issues with my camera and don't actually have a single photo of Anders and I together!

fishing the kenai

One of the coolest things we did in Alaska was fish the Kenai river. It was silver salmon season and the river did not disappoint! After a slow start catching only pinks (pink salmon were also abundant in the river, but most of them were spawned out and they aren't as good), we finally found a pocket of silvers and pulled them out slowly but surely. I'm not sure exactly how many fish we ended up with  (9?), but I do know that we ended up with 44lbs of fish. And while it might seem a little weird that we paid to have all of our fish sent home to Seattle when Anders works in a fish market, there really isn't anything better than eating fish you caught yourself.

I have more pictures to share from our time in the Kenai (we also went to Seward and Homer), but I thought fishing deserved it's own post as there were just too many pictures!