Lopez Island

So, I had to 'work' on Saturday this weekend (lame, I know). Really I just needed to be around the area to be on call if anything bad happened that needed to be reported on base. So I had to go in Saturday morning, pick up the phone and such, do a little paper work in my office, and head home for the rest of the day to be on call. Ryan took the train up to Mt. Vernon Friday night, so we hung out in Oak Harbor on Saturday watching movies and putting together my new inversion table. I have yet to decide if it was a valuable purchase, but my physical therapist says he personally owns 3 of them (I don't know why you would need more than one) and swears they healed all of his wife's back problems, so I figured I would give it a shot.

Since we were already on the Island this weekend, Sunday, after I was officially relieved of my duties in the morning, we took the ferry from Anacortes to Lopez Island. It's one of the San Juan Islands (there are several other ones as well). We decided to go to this island this weekend because Ryan's firm has a couple of projects in the works on the Island right now. First we went to check out a project that the firm had done a few years ago. Apparently some really rich person owns a whole peninsula on the island and has created a little resort of his own. The part of it that the firm did was the pool house which is really the only thing that the public can see without going onto the private property. The building holds an olympic sized pool and that's about it. The front glass facade opens up to make it more of a covered outdoor pool in the summer. It's a pretty sweet little building that apparently doesn't get the use it deserves. I guess when you have lots of money and own a peninsula you can make expensive things like that just for kicks and giggles.

Next we ventured on to the Bumblebee house (named such because it's on Bumblebee st.). It has the most amazing view of the sound! The house sits on a cliff and has huge windows and a big wrap around deck that faces the water. It would be amazing to just sit there and stare out onto the sound all day long! The house is still under construction, but it's close to being done. Another highlight of the house is the little bath house off to the side. We peeked in through a hole and saw two little bath tubs inside the room. The roof of the bath house can open completely up so people can take a bath and stare at the stars. It would really be a pretty awesome experience! The whole complex looks awesome already, but it would be really cool to come back and see it when it's done. Or even better, it would be great to be friends with the people that own it and hang out there for the weekend!

The last site we visited was at the early stages of construction still. The project is being built into a rock, so a lot of the rock had been carved out leaving parts of it that will be incorporated into the building in different areas. One rock face will become one of the walls, and another part of the rock was acting as the base for what looked to be a fire place. So far there were just a few concrete walls starting to go up. This house also had a water view and sat up on a grassy hill. It was hard to tell exactly what it'll look like completed, so it would be interesting to go back in a few months to see it a little further along in construction. Giving the firm, I'm sure it'll be another really amazing house. Plus, I love concrete, so it has a good start in my book already!

After lunch, we spent the rest of the day hiking through some of the parks. We saw a little island off of the island we were on that was covered in seals bathing in the sun. Tara thoroughly enjoyed all the running around, and even got a little sore again the next day from climbing up and down the cliffs. The whole island was just full of beautiful views, and it gets me excited to check out the other islands in the sound too. These island are where they filmed 'Free Willy' too, but I didn't see any whales this time. I am definitely going to have to do a whale watching cruise at some point if I don't see one on my own soon!!