Sucia to Roche Harbor, San Juan Island 2 hours 14 miles

We decided to get the kayaks down and Heather and I went for a nice paddle for an hour and 15 mins or so. At one point we spotted a seal, so we stopped to see where he would pop up next. He poked his head out of the water about 15 feet from us and looked right at us, but I couldn’t get my camera in time before he went under again. The winds picked up and it became harder to paddle, so we headed in. Why don’t we just head on to Roche Harbor now? The tides are with us, and we already stayed here last night, so we might as well move on. So we pulled the kayaks from the water and prepped the boat to get underway. About 2 or so hours later we were in Roche Harbor. Cute harbor with some really nice houses on the shore. Kinda reminds me of the Hamptons of Washington, the way the adults and kids whiz around on their boats and such. We just spent the afternoon/evening on the boat and watched sea planes and boats come and go. We had dinner, some freshly made brownies, and watched some more Beauty and the Beast (Fred & I are way sucked in). Tomorrow we will explore shore. We are exhausted, and it’s only 8:15pm, it’ll be an early night. The sun doesn’t even set for another hour. Every night at sunset (9:08pm tonight) here, they do a colors ceremony. I borrowed this description I found on someone’s blog online… “Every night at sunset, Roche Harbor's Color Guard performs the flag lowering ceremony. They play the national anthems for England, Canada, and The United States before taking down each of those flags. At the end, there is a cannon fire and then a bugle plays taps. It is really neat because the whole harbor goes quiet for the ceremony and when the bugle plays taps, the sound just glides all over the water. But when Taps is done, tons of boaters honk their boat horns, and it gets a little crazy.” And that’s what it was like for us too. We didn’t go ashore for it, but we could see the flags in the distance and they played the music over a loud speaker which carried over the water. There was a wedding reception taking place in a tent on shore, and we could here all the music from the band and D.J. playing everything from Black Eyed Peas to Bell Biv Devoe to Elton John to John Cougar Mellencamp (info from Heather, I had no idea...). But when the colors ceremony commenced, their music stopped and all the guests lined the outside of the tent to watch the ceremony. Pretty cool. And all the while this was going on, there was a magnificent sunset.