Tuesday, August 17th... a beautiful morning and we were off once again.
Our friends, Nancy and Hal Balin had asked a group of us to go on their boat over to Roche Harbor in the San Juan Islands for lunch. Nancy was a flight attendant with Northwest and she and I used to fly together often, Hal was a Northwest Captain. They have a ranch in Klamath Falls, Oregon and spend the winters there and in the summer they come up to Anacortes to spend the summer on their boat "WETOK"
.It was a glorious day on the water ! We boarded at 10am and headed out for a three hour ride.....um sounds familiar!!!!!! Nancy served up bloody-mary's and the stories began.....
As I said, it was a three hour ride to Roche Harbor, a quaint village located on the north end of San Juan Island. Once the "Largest Limeworks west of the Mississippi" and is now on the National register of Historic sites. Many of the old buildings still stand today and one of them houses the Village Market on the corner of the warf overlooking the beautiful gardens. The third photo is of one of two lime kilns that were built by the British under the direction of Lt. Richard Roche, of the Royal Marines as a way of keeping his troops occupied.
After the British troops departed, Joe Ruff filed a claim for the Roche Harbor property and took possession in the late 1870's. The Scurr brothers bought the land from Mr. Ruff in 1881 and restarted lime-stone production.
Limestone was quarried and transported to the kilns where is was burned down into industrial lime which was a major necessity in the production of steel, plaster, cement and paper. At one time Roche Harbor was the largest producer of lime west of the Mississippi. Production ceased in 1956 with the sale of Roche Harbor to Rueben Tarte and family.
The last photo is of Our Lady of Good Voyage Chapel. It sits on the bank overlooking the beautiful harbor. One of the only privately owned Catholic Churches in the U.S., it was originally built as a schoolhouse around 1906 for the education of Roche Harbor Lime and Cement Company workers.
After a wonderful lunch and good company we re boarded the "WETOK" and headed back to Anacortes arriving back at 7pm. What a wonderful way to spend the day!!!!
Being retired is great we all agreed, however we miss seeing our friends and when you can get together and share the day like this with friends, it brings back all the wonderful times that we shared in the heyday of our flying careers.
That is all for now. Hope all is well with everyone...
Love,
Candy and Johnny
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