The first week in October this year was projected to be pretty mild, weather-wise, so Patti and I started looking at taking a week-long trip somewhere. At first we were looking at the North Cascades, base camping somewhere and doing a bunch of hikes. Fire season, and the resulting smoke put that plan out of commission, so we started looking toward the Olympics. Then, Patti had the idea to look at Lopez Island; somewhere neither of us had ever been.
We immediately made ferry reservations and loaded up the car and teardrop, after making a provisioning trip to the U-District farmer’s market in Seattle. It would turn out that we didn’t really need to make that trip to Seattle, since Lopez has some amazing farm stands and bakeries, and a solid market in Lopez Village. The Horse Drawn Farm stand is very close to Spencer Spit state park where we were camping. They actually plow their fields with horses instead of tractors.
Spencer Spit’s campground goes reservation-free in October. We arrived on a Monday, and were one of 4 sites occupied, so it was simple to get a really nice site. The campground is up in the woods, with a short walk to the beach, where we had coffee every morning, and watched the sun go down every evening.
The first paddle we planned, we had to fairly carefully time due to large tidal exchanges combined with narrow passages, which can make for some curly water. We left from Spencer Spit after the fog lifted and visibility improved, then crossed to the Northwest corner of Decatur Island (to the Undertaker’s Reef marker—lovely name).
We then followed the North shore of Decatur to the Northeast corner where we had planned to cross to James Island.
We got a tip from the kayak guide who operates a rental shop on Spencer Spit as we were unloading the kayaks to not cross to James right at the tip of Decatur, but to go South into the bay a little and ferry across the current where the peninsula sticks out toward the middle of James, which we did. The water in the bay of James is pretty mixed up with eddies and boils due to the way the Rosario Strait current flows between the islands. It apparently causes boaters trying to land and launch there a bit of stomach ache.
We had a quick lunch on James, because we had an appointment with the slack current at Lopez pass. Not making slack current results in challenging conditions for small boats there, so we paddled gingerly and got there within 10 minutes of slack. By the second half of the paddle (Spencer to James is ~4 miles. James back to Spencer via Lopez Pass is ~8 mi.) the breeze had picked up a bit, but was with us, so not a struggle to get back.
The next day we took a break from paddling and explored the island on land a bit, picking up some lamb chops and veggies from Horse Drawn Farm to grill that evening in camp. We went to Iceberg Point on the South island, to take the short loop hike there, and to check out paddling conditions and launch points for our next planned paddle. It was around this time that we picked up on the Lopez Wave—motorists on Lopez acknowledge each other with a little hand gesture in passing.
Thursday’s planned paddle was to launch from MacKaye Harbor, paddle around Iceberg point, and along the South shore of Lopez in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
We awoke to the sound of foghorns on the ferries that go past Spencer Spit, and the fog lasted well into the morning. We got to MacKaye Harbor boat launch around 10a, and couldn’t see anything. As a delay tactic we decided to drive over and check out Watmaugh Bay until the fog lifted.
The section of shoreline between MacKaye and Iceberg Pt. was calm and very little current, though the way it is oriented to the strait, I imagine it can get pretty hairy in there.
Around Iceberg you’re in the strait itself, and so there’s more current, and wind can have a big impact. Thursday was calm, and the wildfire smoke haze made looking out into the strait a surreal, whiteout experience. There are lots of little caves and features along this shoreline, and lots of kelp. At one point a big sea lion surfaced in front of me (causing me to stop and back-paddle), and snorted indignantly several times before diving.
On Friday we got a pretty late start, so we did an exploratory paddle from Odlin county park on the North end of Lopez, to Flat Point to see what crossing from there to Shaw would look like during a large tidal exchange (some small rips, but nothing scary). Then we did a short paddle across the North end of Lopez. We decided to see if we could get our Ramen fix at Setsunai Noodles in Lopez Village, and had some Ramen bowls made exclusively from ingredients grown on the island.
Didn’t know what to expect from the ferry trip back on a Saturday (no reservations in that direction), so we got in line about an hour ahead of time for the ferry we were hoping to catch.
