Camping on Orcas Island

We had a very fun camping trip to Orcas Island this summer. One of the most fun camping trips ever. Well, I always say that unless it rains on us. I really enjoy camping with my kiddoes. It’s so fun to go exploring in the wilderness with them. We saw so many things. Here are a few.

Of course, we had our binoculars and kept our eyes open for new and loved birds. Here are a couple that afforded us their picture.

A wren singing his heart out. Something that just always fills me with delight to see and hear.

A Rufous Hummingbird sipping from Great Hedge Nettle. (I hope I got my flower identification right.) Talk about jewels. This kind of beauty just makes me get goosebumps. I love God’s artwork!

God’s artwork is just as beautiful in wide shots as in those close shots.

We took a nice hike to this beautiful waterfall in Moran State Park. It was stunning, no doubt about it. I decided to add the view to my nature journal, since I tend to add close pictures to my nature journal of birds and flowers and things like that and I’d like to learn how to draw nature scenes like this. Unfortunately, one of my boys decided that mother nature was calling loudly, just as soon as I had seated myself and started my sketch, so it is still unfinished. The good thing was that my husband had the camera, so maybe I’ll finish someday, looking at these pictures for reference. My son and I ended up hiking back out much faster than we had hiked in. We freaked out my husband and the other kids, because we couldn’t get their attention as they were ahead of us and my son didn’t want to lose time chasing them down. Anyway, we obviously met back up, but it added a few laughs for our camping trip!

This one was taken after I left, but I love it.

This is the newest toy at our house. (Thanks to Craig’s List.) We took it with us. And enjoyed lots of paddling in the lakes. Now we need another one.

This is the view from the fire lookout tower on Mt. Constitution. Actually, this is only part of the view. We could see a long ways and see lots of islands. Other than the fact that being a fire lookout might have been boring most of the time, this one sure had awesome views.

On our way to Orcas, we visited a couple of other islands, here a couple of shots from Shaw Island.

This is Shark Reef at Shaw Island. I want to take my dad here. He’s a very good artist. I want him to paint what he sees. It’s on my list of things for him to do!! Doesn’t that look like it should be made into a painting to you?

Two stragglers we found there.

Bad hair is one of the fun parts of camping. I have a few of those kinds of shots too, but I’ll save those for my next post. I just get this devilish little thrill of taking pictures of people around the campground, you never can get pictures quite like that anywhere else. So next time. Thanks for enjoying the beauty of our trip with us!