Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Only Casualty was a Pig!


Getting a taste for island hopping I then headed for the San Juan Islands as they are already seeing Orcas this season.

Besides being on a ferry between the islands makes this feel like a holiday ;-)

I ended up on San Juan Island which was the center of a territorial dispute between the US and Canada/Britain. An agreement had the division between the US and Canada a little ambiguous leaving both side claiming sovereignty over San Juan Island. This was fine until 1859 when an Irishmans pig ate some Americans potatoes who then shot the pig. The dispute escalated until US and British troups were dispatched to the islands to spend the next few years goading each with insults and trying to get the other side to fire the first shot. Nobody did and the arbitrator, Kaiser Wilhelm I eventually awarded the island to the US.

So only the pig was a casualty of this 'war'.

The English and American Camps are still there as Parks and tributes to solving a dispute without a human dying. They couldn't tell me who ate the pig.

In my unbiased opinion the the English Camp was by far the nicest.


Didn't see any Whales of any kind, but did get to see a family of foxes playing one afternoon.