Riding the Yakima Ferry to Orcas Island

Last Thanksgiving I traveled to Orcas Island to visit my good friend Randall. Orcas is located in the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound. The easiest way to travel to the islands is on the official Washington State Ferry system. Washington is truly lucky to have these ferries. And as a bonus if you walk on it's fairly cheap compared to going over in your car.

What follows are some of the photos I captured while on the Yakima Ferry. Amazingly it had been a typical cloudy & rainy Seattle November day right up until I arrived in Anacortes to catch the ferry. Lucky for me I arrived just in time for an amazing sunset.

In this first series the light is beginning to creep up to the saturated sunset colors that would follow later. All of these photos are from my point and shoot Nikon 4500 digicam. I would love a chance to re-shoot this trip with my D70 SLR!

After rambling through the numerous small islands of the San Juans we make a stop at Shaw Island to drop off a few passengers. Here are the guide posts for the ferry as it comes in:

And here's the quaint Shaw ferry landing:

After departing Shaw, the sunset really got going and peaked right as we headed to Orcas Island.

Here is the sunset as I arrived into Orcas Landing. I could not have asked for a more perfect day to ride the ferry.

Later on the same trip I got a chance to go to Moran State Park on Orcas. It's a magical place with gorgeous rain forest. Another really neat feature is Mount Constitution. On top there is a lookout tower with a view of the Puget Sound that might just be unrivaled. And yet again I got lucky and received another gift of a spectacular sunset. I was actually completely in the fog until I gained sufficient altitude heading towards the summit. Here are a couple of my photos from the sunset: