San Juan Islands Today
Today, the San Juan Islands are an important tourist destination, with sea kayaking and orca whale-watching by boat or air tours, two of the primary attractions.
Politically, the San Juan Islands comprise, by definition, San Juan County, Washington.
There are 172 islands in the archipelago, some little more than rocks, and over 300 miles (480 km) of shoreline. The majority of the San Juan Islands are quite hilly with some flat areas and valleys, often quite fertile, in between. The tallest peak is Mount Constitution, on Orcas Island, at almost exactly a half-mile (800 m) elevation. The coastlines are a mix of sandy and rocky beaches, shallow and deep harbors, placid and reef-studded bays. Gnarled, ochre-colored madrona trees (Arbutus) grace much of the shorelines while evergreen fir and pine forests cover large inland areas.
The San Juan Islands get less rainfall than Seattle, about 65 miles (105 km) to the south, due to their location in the rain shadow of Olympic Mountains to the southwest. Summertime high temperatures are around 70 °F (21 °C) while average wintertime lows are in the high thirties and low forties. Snow is infrequent in winter except for the higher elevations, but the islands are subject to high winds at times—those from the northeast sometimes bring brief periods of freezing and Arctic-like wind chills.
Read more about this topic: San Juan Islands
Famous quotes containing the words san, juan, islands and/or today:
“There they are at last, Miss Rutledge. The will-o-the-wisps with plagues of fortune. San Francisco, the latest newborn of a great republic.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“Is that the Craig Jurgesen that Teddy Roosevelt gave you?... And you used it at San Juan Hill defending liberty. Now you want to destroy it.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)
“What are the islands to me
if you are lost
what is Naxos, Tinos, Andros,
and Delos, the clasp
of the white necklace?”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricatural. Our world is a world of things.... What we dread most, in the face of the impending débâcle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable.... We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quakey.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)