Not the biggest, but it seems to contain the most. Our first day we popped to the whale museum, booked the Duck Soup Inn and travelled to English Camp. We were visiting 3 islands and planning to eat gourmet on each island. Caroline had the spicy beef starter and halibut, delicious. Sadly, although the food was excellent Murray cannot remember what he ate. Murray decided to root thru’ all our receipts and as we had an itemised bill can now confirm he ate smoked steelhead cakes followed by duck breast and crumble which was equally good. We are now looking for Isenhower Cabernet Sauvignon whenever we buy wine as this locally made wine was really fabulous. The restaurant was so full we never made it inside to the main part, good job we booked.

This island has 3 resident pods of Orca and a National Historic Park. Way back in 1846 the Oregon Treaty settled the USA/British-Canadian border, largely on the 49^th parallel and then through the San Juan Strait. Unfortunately, they forgot about the San Juan Islands in the middle of the strait. Both the US and British settlers thought they owned the land. Then a British pig ate some American potatoes and Lyman Cutler shot the pig. A war was narrowly avoided (the so-called ‘pig war’.) and the British and Americans each set up a garrison at opposite ends of the island. Finally, in 1871 the boundary question was submitted for arbitration to Kaiser Wilhelm who ruled the islands belonged to the States and the British left.

The film at the visitor centre had the Americans present celebrating and yelling out ‘he made the right decision’. We then spent the first part of our walk hearing Americans slagging off the British as petty, bearing grudges etc. Caroline restrained herself only because she was carrying a Junior Ranger book.

We were lucky enough to see a short-eared owl, harbour seals and porpoises, praying mantis and black tailed deer as well as listening to lots of frogs, including tree frogs. Despite hanging out for hours at Lime Kiln State Park, probably the world’s best whale watching beach, we did not see any orcas. Still we have two more islands, so more chances to see whales.