3 Years...

Yesterday was our anniversary. We celebrated three years of marriage, and our first anniversary day together! Since we had to make up for the two that we missed, we went all out. Andy booked us for an "introductory flying lesson" (read sight-seeing tour) with the flying club on base. The on-base connection plus the slightly skewed language made it a pretty affordable little splurge. And it was well worth it. We had a fantastic time.

We flew all around the San Juan Islands. It was really our first look at most of them--our own island has enough to explore, so we haven't had time to venture out to the others much. Our pilot knew quite a bit about each of them. He was fairly obsessed with the 'ginormous' houses strewn throughout the more secluded ones (we even saw the island that the Oakley sunglasses guy owns. Apparently he has his very own Island out here, complete with a few buildings, a road, and an airstrip! Now there's an interesting tidbit!), but we also got to see a couple of lighthouses, our own bridge onto the island (which is a sight to see in itself), Mt. Baker, Mt. Ranier, and Mt. Constitution, and of course... just the view of the beautiful green landforms jutting out of the water everywhere we looked. We hoped to see some whales, but when our pilot radioed to others to see if there were any out, the radio went nutty each time the location was given. Oh well.

A bit of Val-silliness: I was slightly intimidated by the head-gear we had to wear. I guess I got used to the Illinoisian farm-flyers and their 'just shout' philosophy. Other than that it was an absolutely amazing thing to do. I always loved the patchwork-quilt look of Illinois, but flying over the islands in the sound was really something beautiful.

Once our feet were back on the ground we headed to the middle of the island (the one we live on), for a bite to eat at our favorite restaurant. Since we were a little early we wandered around the wharf, and snapped some photos there too.

All in all it was a wonderful, wonderful day.