More great times on Cortes Island, June 2023

 So glad we returned to Cortes Island.  We had so much fun in our 11 days here.  We saw humpbacks on the way out on the ferry  (a good sign), Got lots of good eagle shots (as we usually do everywhere up here), took in Linnaea farm and got a personal long tour of Cortes Wild with Donna (another Donna), did tidepooling (it was great) right in front of our place at the entrance to Manson’s lagoon, did several sunset paddles, and made it out to the Gilean Douglas home one last time (about a 3.5 mile paddle…someone has bought the property and is refinishing the cottage…pretty tastefully it appeared), did three hikes with Brad who is on the island for 5 days, Kwas Park, Easter Bluff and Carrington Bay; took Brad out for an early morning paddle from our place, did three fabulous paddles from Cortes Bay, including having seeing a pod of porpoises up close and personal, fantastic tidepooling from the kayak, and magnificent scenery, sunset walks at Smelt Bay and Manson’s landing, and an evening hike at Hank’s beach, and lastly visiting Hollhock (a retreat center on the island) where our last night on the island we had the first of several birthday celebrations for Donna’s upcoming 70th birthday on August 5th with a delicious halibut dinner.   We loved Cortes so much, we are returning next summer for 23 days, the last 7 of which we will be joined by Nic, Anna and Aria.   Lots of photos (I’m not great on culling photos, believe it or not this is just a subset of the photos I took).