Friday Harbor to Roche Harbor

We drove to American Camp right after breakfast and had some great wildlife sightings. First, a fox stopped to groom itself right in the road. Later, we watched two distinctively colored coyotes pouncing on rodents in the large prairie behind Pickett's Beach. They had a lot of black fur and one had a white tip on its tail.
We returned the rental car, cast off the docklines, and caught the last of the ebb tide down toward Cattle Pass, crossing tacks with two other E38s (Nordic Pearl and ?). We didn't quite make it through the pass before it turned to flood, so we motored on through and across the Inner Passage toward Haro.
Sailing once again, we soon spotted the telltale signs of nearby orcas (namely, scads of little inflatables filled with tourists all zipping toward the same spot). Poor whales, they never get much privacy. We saw several females with babies, and finally a large male.
The sailing was pretty good, so we elected to continue on past Roche and on to Reid Harbor on Stuart Island. We got there in time for an early dinner and a 6-mi roundtrip hike to Turn Pt Lighthouse. A cute baby harbor seal was floating around like a little football in the kelp at the point.
The next morning we tried to time our crossing to Roche, but still ended up fighting current across Speiden Channel and had to motor the last bit. Roche was full of the usual chaos, but we enjoyed the scene (and Fred really enjoyed seeing so many floatplanes). We went ashore for "colors" at sunset, and poor Chica freaked out when they fired the toy cannon. Day done, peace reigned again, and we had fun getting beaten at Farkel by Fred.