Coupeville to La Conner June 21st, 2008

We woke to another beautiful day. MK went for a run while the rest of us wandered around town and went to the local coffee place right on the dock. MK met us there and we had coffee and scones. MK and Rachel picked up some souvenirs for their family and we returned to NuMoon and set off for La Conner. To reach La Conner you travel through a narrow channel named Swinomish. It has high cliffs once you enter and the current moves fairly quickly, so you need to pay attention. It is not a long trip from Coupeville to La Conner, and in the channel the houses along the way, really, they are mansions and are phenomenal. The one in the picture had two huge eagle sculptures on the bluff below. La Conner is a cute town with lots of public docks, restaurants and art and fashion galleries and stores. We wandered the whole length of the town, visited another local museum and hit plenty of the shops. I must admit, owning the boat and having limited space, has curtailed much of my shopping desire. We simply have no place for fragile items and no space for anything other than a T shirt souvenir. Our entire trip, since we left California, I have been waiting to either catch, or at a restaurant eat, a whole Dungeness crab. We arrived before the crab season in Oregon and Washington. Washington’s crab season opens on July 2. So we were too early to try our own luck and use our new crab pot. Rachel had heard my lament and in all the restaurants helped me ask and look over the menu for fresh live crab. We spent all day wandering and returned to the boat in the early evening. MK and Rachel took off to go look at an item they thought they might get for one of their friends in Denver. In about 10 minutes Rachel came running back to the boat, she asked if we had a bucket or a plastic bag. I gave her the bucket we had and about 10 minutes later she came back with four live crabs. Not only were they live, fresh and just caught, she got all four for $10!!! Thank you Rachel!!!! I killed, cleaned and cooked the crab and we had a wonderful feast that night, much to the chagrin of our on board vegetarian MK. We retired for the night and I was extremely happy that finally after two months of sea travel and avoiding crab pots everywhere, that we had a friend from Denver find our first live crab.