Big dolphins and the dude

Before we left for San Juan we heard the island was great for cycling, we rang the bike hire place from Seattle and they had plenty in stock so we didn't book. This was kind of stupid as it was the fourth of July weekend! When we arrived they were all booked and our plans scuppered. However, this turned out great for us in the end, we had to resort to hitch hiking, which is were we meet the most interesting people and got to ride in the back of pickups like in the movies. The second lift that we hitched was the lady who helped run the cycle shop, she took pitty on us as her daughter lived in England and we paid our way back to the campsite by strawberry picking for her at the church allotment.

Hitch hiking is also how we ended up meeting a geneticist studying the whales. Sam Wasser is basically a real life version of the dude from the Big Lebowski, only much more high flying.  He pioneered a technique that involves dogs trained to sniff out whale poo among other things.  The dog stands on the front of the boat as it follows a pod of orca whales and barks to direct the crew towards floating whale poo which is apparently similar to egg white and someone hangs overboard with a scoop to collect a sample which can then be analysed.  See this link  for more about the work with  detection dogs http://conservationbiology.net/research-programs/killer-whales-2/ http://conservationbiology.net/conservation-canines/

Sam and fellow conservationist Fred took us out to see 'J' pod a resident group of orcas who feed on Salmon which get channelled between the San Juan Islands.  Sam wanted to get some photos of the whale watching boats so once we had helped assemble and then test out Fred's new table tennis table we set out in a small boat to find the pod.  They were fishing up near the north of the island by driving the salmon against the cliffs which meant the people on the land had orcas right under their feet.  We were as close as boats are allowed  to get and the whales were putting on a good show of breaching, swimming upside down and tail slapping - it was absolutely amazing! We were dropped off at Roche harbour home of the super rich, only about two of the boats had sails while the other 200 were gin palaces. Roche is also home to a very strange sculpture park (see pic below)

We rounded off the day with massively oversized marshmellows at the campfire given to us by friendly neighbours at the campsite.

The don't come much cooler than this

Whales - I wish I had A better camera

Very dodgy looking naff sculpture at the sculpture park we were too cheap to visit

Marshmellows on steroids with Canadain bus driving ladies at the campsite