A nice easy day today.  We left our lovely little spot at Victim Island and under a warm, blue sky motored around the end of Orcas Island over to Deer Harbor.  What a snug little spot.  They still had “winter rates” so we took a slip for the night – only $34 – and walked around a bit.  I’d say “around town”, but there is no town.  This is a pretty rural area, which makes it nice and peaceful, but not too much to do.  There is, however, one restaurant.  It’s at the Deer Harbor Inn which dates back to the 1920’s.  We decided to treat ourselves and we weren’t disappointed.  The Inn caters to locals as well as those like us lucky enough to stumble on it.  We again felt like we entered the “way back machine” as the dining room and guests seemed a bit more out of the past than the present.  And I mean that in a really fun way.  It was delightful, with nice, sincere, wonderful people and great food!  What a treat.

But the real treat of the night was the piano player in the dining room.  The opposite of our first impression.  When we walked in we saw an “older gentleman” playing a pretty uninspired tune on an electric piano and I think both of us thought at the same time; “lounge lizard!”  We couldn’t have been more wrong.  His next tune was more upbeat and at the end we (and another table) clapped and this seemed to get him going – well, he jazzed it up and the rest of night was one fabulous old jazzy standard after another.  And a great voice to boot.  At the break we got the biggest surprise of all.  He went around table to table and said hello to everyone.  We got to talking – told him about our voyage, etc – and we learned, surprise…he was a former military pilot who flew B-52’s most of his career.  Came up to Deer Harbor to retire.  What a juxtaposition!

Anyway, that’s our “serendipitous moment” for today.

Tomorrow we “head out”.  Sucia Island which is a national park with no services and then after hopefully a couple days of hiking and such, we go across the border into Canada.

Let the adventure begin.