By: Stella, Isabella, Riya

Today’s destination was Shaw Island, the smallest of the four San Juan islands. At 6:30 am, we were awoken by Barry’s quiet knock (or by our roommates if the knocking wasn’t enough). We ate breakfast, packed lunch, and debated whether cheddar cheese and strawberry jam were a good combination. We loaded up the van and rushed to the ferry terminal, only to find our ferry was delayed a little over an hour. After some aimless wandering and stopping at the Salty Fox for drinks, we boarded the ferry and proceeded to reenact the Titanic (a rite of passage for ferry rides).

While the ferry was parked at one of the stops before Shaw, we observed a few seagulls and passionately discussed lesbian seagulls. You had to be there. Sorry blog readers (not sorry).

When we arrived at Shaw, we made a quick stop at the best (and only) store on the entire island, the Shaw General Store. We picked up snacks (we were already hungry) and admired the Dr. Bronner’s soap selection (more on this a little later). Once back on the road, we made our way to the beach, excited to collect Eelgrass seeds to assist Dr. Sandy Wyllie-Echeverria, Dr. Cinde Donoghue, and DNR in their conservation efforts.

Half of us suited up in waders, and the other half were left with rubber boots (I’m still salty I didn’t get waders)

We were given a brief on how to identify the flowering shoots and the phases of the seeds to ensure successful collection, and then we were off to work!

Some of us were more successful than others, and some simply provided moral support, like our BBBBBBB (beloved beautiful bashful best bag boy Brian). If you can’t tell from the name, he held the net for the seeds we collected. We lost some steam as we went on, but we were pretty successful (expected as we are such a hardworking, amazing, and cool group). 

After collecting eelgrass seeds, we stripped off our boots and waders. Our gear managed to keep most of us relatively dry, with the exception of Brain, who fully imposed the fact that his boots were filled to the brim with water. As he walked up the path to the parking lot, his boot squelched loudly, and water poured out the sides. 

We ate lunch in a grassy field. It was a much-needed break after the hard work of eelgrass seed collection. Sadly our break was not long because, after about fifteen minutes, we were informed that the tide was too high to go out again and that we had two options: 1) Race across the island to the ferry that left in ten minutes 2) Spend the next five hours on Shaw doing who knows was and get back late. Needless to say, we chose the former. So in the blink of an eye, we packed up our lunches, put our boots in the back of the van, and were off.

Little did we know that when we arrived at the ferry terminal, the ferry still had not reached the terminal. So the group decided to go to The General Store again to see what Shaw’s only store had to offer.

Once again, Caleb was enamored by the bottles of Dr. Bronner’s Soap. He loudly touted the many amazing uses of the bottle of eighteen-in-one of soap. When asked for a comment about the Dr. Bronners for the blog, Caleb said he would be keeping all of his Dr. Bronner opinions to himself for now so that he would be able to later share them on his own. I encourage you, dear reader, to keep a lookout for Caleb’s Dr. Bronner opinions which hopefully will grace the internet soon.

On the way back from Shaw Island (a very fun but tiring outing), the ferry which we ran to catch ended up getting delayed by an hour. We were “sooo disappointed” that the cars couldn’t get out of the ferry because that meant we wouldn’t have to – oh I mean GET to! – go to the Friday Harbor Labs and instead got a chance to explore town.

Me and my gals (and Brian!) decided to check out the various nail-bitingly-expensive goods of San Juan. First, we headed to a toy store appropriately named Toy Box to get some fun games for us to play. 

After that, Cleo joined us and Brian DITCHED US when we went to some boutique shops (wait that makes sense: I don’t know why he’d wanna go to a boutique) that were WAYYYY out of our budget… 

But besides that, we were too broke to afford any clothes or good stuff, even though we found some gems: toddler sunglasses and an overpriced fedora (it was $50)!! 

It’s all good though – we visited a thrift shop right after where Cleo got suchhh a good deal on brand new Levi’s. Like $30 dollars – for a brand new pair! The thrift store was definitely more in our budget. Oh yeah – and the thrift store also had so many Barbie dolls… 

After our shopping, we strolled back to the school and met up with the hardworking essay writers Keelin and Maya and walked home. Super exhausting day, but so much fun!!