Walk-on passengers get ready to board a state ferry in Friday Harbor. Between islands, walk-ons need no ticket, we’ve learned.

THIS WEEK WE DISCOVERED a good trick to know if you live on a remote island: how to play tourist without it costing more than a trifling bit of gas money (to get there, anyway).

We visited Friday Harbor, the San Juan Islands’ most popular tourist town, had lunch with a friend, did a little shopping, and got back home in time for dinner, letting someone else do most of the piloting.

Here’s how it works:

We take our boat, the WeLike, from Center Island to the Hunter Bay public dock on Lopez Island, just a couple miles across the water, and tie up for the day. From there we take our stored pickup truck, known as Ranger Rick (yes, it’s a Ford Ranger), to the Lopez Island ferry dock and park it in the free day-parking lot. Then we walk aboard the Friday Harbor-bound state ferry for the hour-long ride, with stops at pretty Shaw and Orcas islands.

A nice view of Orcas Island’s Turtleback Mountain (with the turtle head on the left), as seen from the state ferry.

What we didn’t realize before: Washington State Ferries doesn’t charge walk-on passengers traveling from one island to another in the San Juans. It’s not worth their trouble, I guess. So “ha, ha,” say we! Now’s our chance to get back all the ferry fares we paid over the years, like when we lived in Bremerton and worked in Seattle.

And because Friday Harbor is quite walkable, you don’t need a car. Or if you wish to see more of the island, you can hop on one of two island shuttles, and have lunch in Roche Harbor. Or go crazy and rent a moped (maybe next time).

It beats taking our own boat that far and having to find (and pay for) dock space. We’re retired folk, you know. Squeezing pennies until Abe screams is becoming a finely honed new talent.

It’s still the islands’ quiet season, as this view from the ferry’s stern testifies, with nary another vessel in sight.

 

 

As more skyscrapers rise, the rest of Manhattan doesn’t look so far below anymore, from the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

FROM 35,000 FEET OVER MONTANA – We island-dwelling hermits re-earned our merit badges as urban navigators this morning, departing on foot from our hotel on New York’s Upper West Side at 5:30, when the only other people on the Broadway sidewalks were a few guys washing down shopfronts with garden hoses and one early-rising hot-dog vendor just starting to get his relish, mustard and ketchup organized for the day.

From 79^th Street, we made our way south on the No. 1 subway to Penn Station, then caught the commuter train to Newark Liberty International Airport, transferred to the airport tram, and sat down to wait at our Alaska Airlines gate by 7:30 a.m., each with a cup in hand of the hot, brown, taste-free liquid that masquerades as coffee in New Jersey. A whole hour to spare before boarding our flight home to Seattle, and we didn’t have to ask directions once.

We’d seen a lot the previous day, on our final full day in the big city. Best choice we made: Going to the top of the Empire State Building (Barbara’s first time) at 9 in the morning, just as the sun was burning away morning clouds. No lines for the elevator at that hour. And the golden morning light was still good for photos. Barbara and Lillian got a kick out of looking down at rooftop gardens on buildings all around us. I got a kick out of checking my watch to see how quickly the elevator rocketed upward (79 stories in less than an ear-popping minute).

Lillian and I explore the High Line, a former above-the-street rail line preserved with lovely plantings and outdoor art, near the Hudson River shore west of the Empire State Building.

The next adventure on the agenda Lil had set out for us was a trek on the High Line, the former elevated rail line – now an above-the-streets walking path — that has become a major hit with residents and visitors alike. The 22-block walk retains many of the old train tracks and ties, lined with public art and lovely plantings of forget-me-nots, hellebores and more. We found a private bench among leafy trees and picnicked on salads and olives from Zabar’s deli, with blooming trilliums at our feet. Delightful, and unexpected.

Late that afternoon, we finished our day with a tour of the T-Rex special exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History on the edge of Central Park. It was one of the better interactive exhibitions I’ve seen about the king of lizards. Lil and I had fun playing with a sound mixer that let us experiment with what the dinosaur’s roar might have sounded like (we blended bits of sea lion, some bison bellows, crocodile grunts, and even some loon laughs — the dinos were related to birds, after all). We also got a kick out of a virtual-reality set-up that had us donning goggles and manipulating handsets to help “assemble” a T-Rex skeleton, which then came to life before our goggled eyes and gave us a few good thrills and chills. (I had to duck when it tried to bite my head off.)

Twenty-seven-year-old Lillian measures up to a four-year-old T-Rex at the American Museum of Natural History.

After a delicious dinner of gourmet tacos at Cafe Frida, Barbara chose to put her feet up back at the hotel while Lil and I strolled through blooming gardens of bleeding heart and fragrant azalea among the rocky landscapes of Manhattan’s Riverside Park. As we watched the sun set over the Hudson, where sailboats bobbed at moorings, it was a happy conclusion to an urban adventure on an island very different from our own.

Ridiculously tall new skyscrapers tower over New York’s Central Park, where model sailboats take a more modest scale.

MY DAUGHTER HAS ALWAYS LOVED SAILING but little did she know it could be so much fun on a pond in New York’s Central Park — when the boat is radio-controlled and not much bigger than a skateboard.

I could hardly tear Lillian away from the controls as our half-hour rental wound down.

We weren’t sure we’d be able to sail at all; the pond was wind-free as we arrived shortly before the rental operation’s 11 a.m. opening. But at 10:55, a ripple broke the mirror-like calm that reflected some of the ridiculously tall and skinny skyscrapers that are now being constructed in Manhattan. We took the controls of Sailboat 800 (we renamed it the Rosabella, after a favorite sea chantey) and enjoyed piloting the boat all over the pond.

A classic yacht carries sightseers past the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Later in the day we watched a lifesize sailboat — carrying tourists — skimming a bigger body of water as it passed the Statue of Liberty and nearby Ellis Island. From Battery Park at the south tip of Manhattan, we enjoyed the spectacle of tour boats weaving in and out among these iconic landmarks of American immigration. Barbara recalled that her grandmother from Hungary came through Ellis Island as a young woman of 19, determined to make a life here.

No walls kept her out. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but her family made a good life here, thanks to a nation that at that time took that statue’s symbolism to heart.

 

Don’t get this guy mad: The 30-foot animatronic gorilla puppet called Kong had an amazing number of facial expressions, but his vocabulary mostly consisted of roars like a T-Rex. In front, the puppeteers who made him move take a bow in the glare of the footlights.

I’M CALLING IT “urban immersion therapy,” and our five days in New York City are definitely a change from spending the winter on Center Island.

It’s good to shake things up now and then.

My family and I definitely got a good shaking (from sound waves) on Sunday when we went to see the Broadway musical version of “King Kong.”

We considered catching a more intellectual show, but daughter Lillian convinced us when she posed the question, “How can you pass up a 30-foot-tall animatronic gorilla puppet?”

Especially one that, when riled, beats his chest and roars like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park? (See a YouTube “trailer” here.) It’s just about enough to blow you out of your seat.

The matinee was a great way to spend a rainy Sunday in Manhattan. And Monday, when the sun shone beautifully, we sailed a model boat in Central Park and went to see the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. More on that to come, with further reports from Gotham City. 

Latest additions to the writing hut: a handpainted mailbox from the Lopez dump (who knows what will show up in there!) and a twirling butterfly wind toy from Cannon Beach.

BUTTERCUPS, WILD STRAWBERRIES AND INDIAN PLUM are blooming around The Nuthatch cabin this week. The redwood sorrel I planted from Swanson’s Nursery is doing well, too, with its dainty flowers like pale pink confetti. And star-petaled camas flowers mirrored the lapis lazuli blue sky on a recent visit to Shark Reef Sanctuary on Lopez Island.

Today I’m glorying in an afternoon with the door and window wide open in Wee Nooke, my writing hut atop our rocky knoll, as Galley, our little ginger girl cat, wanders in and out for Tasty Chicken Flavor kitty treats.

Thankfully, Galley seems to have given up her recent habit of bringing live garter snakes in and dropping them at my feet. Perhaps my leaping about and yelling that I REALLY didn’t want them finally convinced her. I hope I didn’t seriously wound her gift-giving good intentions, but some habits need nipping in the bud.

Camas flowers are in bloom on the banks of San Juan Channel, on Lopez Island.

Snakes aside, on Center Island we’re enjoying sunny days of bucolic delights in advance of something completely different: On Saturday, we fly to New York City for five days of urban immersion. May in the big city.

For Barbara and me, it will be our first Big Apple bite in many years. We both visited the city as youngsters and determined that once was enough. As adults, when we wanted a metropolis with world-class theater and superb museums, London was our repeat destination. But our 27-year-old daughter, Lillian, has visited New York a couple times on her own and likes it a lot. So we decided it might be fun to go for a few days with her as our tour guide. She’s planning our daily itinerary, which is a treat for this retired travel editor.

There’s talk of a Broadway show, the Empire State Building, art museums, lots of deli food, and sailing toy boats on the pond in Central Park.

Shiver me timbers. Updates to come.

Here’s the new paperback version of  “Corpse of Discovery,” a murder mystery that weaves tales of the Portland bookmobile with stories of has-been Rajneeshees, librarian love, and a death-defying paddle down the Columbia River in the path of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. Our friend Stevie Lennartson created the cover art.

ONE OF MY GOALS over the winter was to get a start writing the third mystery in the Portland Bookmobile Mysteries series that Barbara and I have co-authored and published through Amazon under the pen name “B.B. Cantwell.” And I’ve done so. Barbara and I have enjoyed collaborating again.

Along the way, I decided it was time that our second book in the series should be available in paperback, not just as an ebook (which it has been since we published it in 2014).

So I took the time to format the text for print and finally got “Corpse of Discovery” out in paperback ($9.99 from Amazon). We got our first copies in the mail this week. And it looks pretty good.

A book shop on Lopez Island is interested in featuring our books on their “local author” shelf, so we’ll deliver some to them soon. I think both “Murdermobile” (the first in the series, originally published in paperback) and “Corpse” make fun, light reading for anybody on vacation to the islands or elsewhere.

Our mysteries travel well, apparently. Here’s a photo sent by our friend Jackie Smith, showing “Murdermobile” as it arrived in the post to her house on a hill in the Kalamata region of Greece. Read Jackie’s blog about her retirement and travel adventures at travelnwrite.com.

 

My nemesis, with cowling removed: WeLike’s 90-horsepower Evinrude outboard is stretching my mechanical talents. But I haven’t thrown in the shop towel.

MY DARLING BARBARA SAYS my addiction to the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle has honed my stick-to-it-iveness, especially since I’ve made it part of my second-cuppa morning routine at The Nuthatch. I never give up until I’ve finished a puzzle, even if 23-down is as obscure as “compacted Swiss snow” (firn).

And I don’t rely on having the Sunday paper in my hands. I have whole binders of the puzzles, which I can pick up anytime, just like Mitt Romney had binders full of women (remember that low point of the 2012 presidential debates?).

In any case, my refusal to give up serves me well on an island with no shops and no repairmen. Like when our runabout’s temperamental outboard motor acts up. Again.

I’m currently not a big fan of Mr. Evinrude, I’ve told my neighbors as they’ve wandered by WeLike, sitting on her trailer in the meadow next to the Center Island clubhouse, where she’s been stranded for weeks as I’ve been trying one little fix after another.

It’s not a huge problem for us. We use a water taxi service to the mainland for doctor’s appointments and major provisioning trips anyway. But it means we rely on neighbors’ generosity for rides to Lopez Island for trash disposal, library visits and pleasurable little stops at Holly B’s Bakery for cinnamon rolls and coffee.

I’ve changed the spark plugs (far more complicated than it needed to be, thank you Mr. Evinrude). I’ve changed the internal fuel filter and installed a new Racor water-fuel separator. I’ve rebuilt the water pump (what should have been a simple, routine procedure was a major ordeal thanks to Made-in-the-U.S.A. engineering).  When I need another part, I go online to a supplier in Denver, wait four days and it’s here.

My latest tinker: replacing the motor for the hydraulic pump that raises and lowers the outboard. Thanks to a sadistic designer who apparently got his kicks out of positioning bolts just out of reach behind a metal bracket or with not quite the clearance needed to insert an Allen wrench, I spent a whole afternoon removing one bolt completely by blind finger feel, rotating it a quarter inch at a time. I guess “stick-to-it-tiveness” sounds better than “stupidity.” (Hey, I got it done.)

So doing crossword puzzles not only helps keep your mind sharp. It apparently also helps you repair outboard motors built in Wisconsin.

It’s part of the Catch-22 challenge of living on a lovely remote island. When the boat doesn’t run, you can’t take it to a mechanic. Because the boat won’t get you there. So you just figure it out.

In his splashy mating-season plumage, a plump male goldfinch — perhaps fattened up on a diet of street tacos? — perches on the blooming wild currant in front of Nuthatch cabin.

TODAY MARKS THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of Barbara’s final day of work at the University of Washington’s Suzzallo Library. My one-year mark for departing The Seattle Times comes next Tuesday. For us, the time has flown as quickly as the goldfinches that have just returned to the San Juans from their Mexican wintering grounds.

When I returned from a Seattle visit last week — a hectic round of doctor checkups (all’s well-ish, for an old fart) and auto maintenance (airbag recall on the Honda, new sparkplugs, etc.) — Barbara passed along news of an exciting event while I’d been away.

“The goldfinches have returned!” she told me, beaming like a Super Moon. (You might even say she was all atwitter.)

It’s symbolic of how our lives have changed since we ditched our office jobs and moved to Nuthatch cabin. We measure the passing of the seasons by the birds at our feeders and the flowers in our woods. (Barbara has suggested I start going by “Henry David.” I’m not sure.)

The other day she proclaimed, “I love that we get to see the whole season of flowering on our wild currant,” rather than just a couple of days worth of blooms during the monthly visits we used to make when we were job-bound. (How do you like that for a term? It’s part of our new paradigm.)

The goldfinches are a happy recurrence. Last summer, as loyal Reefers might recall, we saw the bright yellow males and their paler mates raise whole families here. It was obvious when the new hatchlings emerged, awkward in flight and sometimes falling into the water feature on our deck, which is popular as a bird bath in warmer months.

Goldfinches, notable as Washington’s state bird, are one of our favorites, adding a cheerful splash of color to our woods.

I think we can take another year of this. 

Our first wildflower of the season: A calypso orchid — also known as a fairy slipper — bloomed a few steps from the Nuthatch cabin’s back door yesterday. The fir cone at its base gives you an idea of the flower’s diminutive size.

We’re also enjoying a bumper crop of daffodils this spring. They are a popular garden flower in the San Juans because deer won’t eat them.

And the wild currant that sprouts straight out of the rocky cliff in front of our deck continues to put on a show. Here’s hoping your April is as colorful.

A bride on horseback? Or Galadriel in an amateur fantasy film? We could only speculate as she trotted along Cannon Beach, with Tillamook Rock Light in the background.

NO PLACE IS PERFECT. But on sunny afternoons when I’m ensconced in my writing hut on the rocky knoll and Center Island deer are bedded down in the grass 10 feet outside my window,  I might be forgiven for falling back on an old cliche: This ain’t paradise, but you can see it from here.

But sometimes the best way to appreciate a place is to leave it. So where do we go when we need a getaway? Most recently, we ran away to Cannon Beach, Oregon.

We just enjoyed a long weekend there, and like the spring-break throngs who joined us, we still think it’s among the best Northwest beach towns.

Originally, we had booked the trip there to celebrate Barbara’s birthday in February.  But the Snow Apocalypse (as a local meteorologist dubbed it) intervened, so we had to reschedule. As it turned out, we ended up celebrating both Barbara’s birthday and my April birthday with a wonderful few days with our daughter, Lillian.

From left: Lillian, Barbara and Haystack Rock.

We indulged in lots of good food (such as pesto pizza from Pizza a’fetta, and Lil’s luscious lemon-Brussels sprout linguine) and maybe a little too much good wine. (If you’ve not sat at a picnic table in the sun at the edge of a gorgeous Pacific beach and played card games with your favorite people while guzzling mimosas on an April Sunday morning, Dr. Travel will write you a prescription for it right now.)

My family has always loved playing games together. The latest generation of commercially packaged games, which our 27-year-old daughter discovers for us, are a long drive past Marvin Gardens and Baltic Avenue. This trip Barbara and I fell for Sushi Go!, a silly card game in which players match up sashimi (three sashimi = 10 points), tempura, nigiri and more. I don’t even much like sushi, but this game was a kick in the wasabi.

Lillian also introduced us to Mysterium, a non-competitive board game in which players collaborate to figure out who killed the butler. There is no Miss Scarlet or Colonel Mustard, but they’ve probably been guests at the same mansion.

A spearmint-colored anemone sifts nutrients from saltwater at the base of Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Intermingle all that with long walks to the base of Haystack Rock to peer at anemones at low tide and watch for the arrival of spring puffins; a bit of kite flying; and poking around favorite old shops (Dueber’s gift shop is still there) and a few new ones (Voyages toy shop carries a party pack of Sushi Go!). Instead of birthday cake, we shared a giant banana split, complete with marshmallow fluff and maraschino cherries, in our Captain’s Quarters room at the oceanfront Schooner’s Cove Inn.

No deer outside the window, but plenty more to spice up a long weekend.

And after more than 500 miles of round-trip driving, subjecting our poor cats to “boarding school,” and shrinking the Cantwell family savings account a bit, boy are we glad to be back home on our rock.

But for the salty memories, the change of pace, reinvigoration of the soul, even my education about sushi — we’re glad we went.