By Elspeth with Denny, William, and Jonathan

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s…driftwood? Today, our second day at Salish Sea Sciences, students went on a scavenger hunt in Friday Harbor, explored the whale museum, and went on a hike in Lime Kiln Point State Park.

Our initial foray into Friday Harbor was a scavenger hunt. We raced across town taking pictures of strangely specific buildings and objects, earning points along the way. When we tallied up the points, our team was very close to the others, with only 250 points less.

Later in the day, we visited the Whale Museum. It was a whale of a time, and the tour pod-sitively blowhole-d our minds. We strode through the museum with porpoise, dol-finding interesting things along the way, such as this cool harbor seal skeleton. We’ve made it
a-pun-dantly clear how much we love puns, but, don’t worry, we’ll stop now.

After we returned, we headed to the Lime Kiln Interpretive Center, where we were shown around by Erin Corra, Founder and Director of FOLKS (Friends of Lime Kiln Society). She showed us many types of native trees and rocks, and the sea view was gorgeous. On the way, we toured the newest lighthouse in Washington State, built in 1919. We spotted a pod of orcas from the top, which ended up being a bunch of driftwood…we were all very disappointed. She then led us to a restored lime kiln – the park’s namesake – and we got a short history lesson on the lime industry in the San Juan Islands. Some of us went down to the beach below the kiln, where we found many hermit crabs and anemones. We headed back to the dorm soon after that, and began to prepare dinner and write this very blog post!

Before dinner, we recognized the history of Juneteenth, particularly as a federal holiday. After dinner, we got a very interesting presentation by Kyra and Henry, who currently work for the whale museum. We then ate ice cream and watermelon.