Weekend at Granny's
June snuck up more stealthily than ever this year, and with it, my rank as step-mother of a seventeen-year-old. To celebrate her birthday, Avery did a whale watch excursion with her dad. Neither of them had ever been out in the Salish Sea looking for orcas, and the Clipper delivered on their first try. They stalked a pod of five rolling, jumping whales through the sunshine into Canadian waters, and had dinner in Friday Harbor . The teenager was in pleasant spirits even 14 hours after an unspeakably early Saturday morning. The dad, though, was spellbound. He spent Sunday online studying "their" whale pod and the jackpot San Juan Island lookout point called Lime Kiln state park. On Tuesday someone filmed almost ten minutes of orcas coasting and frolicking along the park's edge, and posted it to YouTube. On Wednesday Phil came home early, announced that he was taking Friday off, and found a vacancy at a bed and breakfast five minutes down the road from Lime Kiln. On ...