What is the best part of cruising the San Juan Islands?
- No reservations needed: No rigid schedule, just drop the hook in a quiet cove or snag a park buoy whenever you arrive.
- You're the captain: You get to come and go as you like.
- Total flexibility: If the weather shifts or you just feel like exploring, you can change your plan and head wherever the day looks best.
After a swift pit stop at the store to grab provisions, we set off, and just like that, the relaxation begins the moment the lines are cast off. Four days, five days, ten days—it hardly matters. Time bends and stretches with the tides, and I leave the world behind in an instant. Well, almost everything. The wine and Hershey bars? Tragically, mistakenly forgotten. But with the wind in my face and the horizon ahead, my thoughts drift only to the simple joy of the journey—unburdened, untethered, and blissfully carefree.
Yet, as any seasoned traveler knows, the best-laid plans are
at the mercy of life’s unpredictable whims and, of course, family obligations.
Some detours are mere nuisances; others, unavoidable. And sometimes, they come
with a lesson in patience.
Take, for example, my quest to witness the flag-lowering
ceremony at Roche Harbor—a seemingly simple ambition that took me four years
and three thwarted attempts to fulfill. One year, I missed the cruise entirely.
Another time, just minutes before the cannon signaled sundown, a wayward boat
dragged anchor into us, throwing my evening plans overboard.
When I finally did witness the ceremony, it was purely by
accident—I had long since abandoned the notion of seeing it firsthand. And so,
as the baby cannon, a miniature yet mighty relic of medieval artillery, erupted
into the evening air, it caught me utterly off guard. A fiery muzzle flash
illuminated the perfectly manicured lawn, and before I knew it, a startled yelp
may or may not have escaped my lips—not that anyone could hear it over the
booming report. The sound wasn’t quite deafening, but it was certainly enough
to send my heart into a gallop.
Then came the echoes, rolling like thunder across Roche
Harbor, ricocheting off Henry Island, and sinking any evidence of my momentary
shock. In the end, the ceremony was every bit as grand as I’d imagined—perhaps
even more so, given the journey it took to get there.
