August 1, Anacortes, WA

We made arrangements this morning to get in to the RV park here at the Casino so moved this morning and got settled in for a couple of days. Drove to the Anacortes ferry dock to see about taking the Jeep and going over to Victoria tomorrow. The terminal was a mad house but we found out that it’s a 2-hour ride to Victoria and we would have to go through customs (both ways). we would only have about 5 hours on the island to look around so we decided that wasn’t enough time and opted not to go. We’ve been to Victoria before, several years ago, but would have been nice to see Butchart Gardens again. Anacortes is a center for building commercial and private boats so drove to the shipyards. We saw them working on a huge ship and think it was a cargo ship or tanker but not sure. We found a marine hardware store that has to have been there 100 years or more. It was like a museum but they had everything from old parts to new. They specialize in parts for old wooden boats and I’d bet they have whatever you need. It was fun to wander around. We stopped at a little Hawaiian restaurant for a drink and met the owner, who is from Hawaii and just moved to Anacortes a year ago. Nice place but we went to the marina for supper and to walk the docks. There were several beautiful boats and we even picked out a few that we thought we could live on. We’re thinking we could become “Boat Potatoes”.