My wife and I will be in NW Washington in September. Can someone who is familiar with the area let me know if we should spend a couple days on the San Juans or at Olympic Natl Park? When you take out driving time, we will only have 2 full days to explore.

If you had 2 weeks, I would recommend both the San Juans, and the Olympic Peninsula, but island hopping takes too much time out of two days. The boat travel takes a lot of time. For 2 days go enjoy the Olympics. You can drive up into the mountains, go around to the rain forest on the ocean side, watch the sunset from Cape Flattery, have great seafood anywhere. The NW cold water oysters are to be revered, commonly known there to be a powerful aphrodisiac, when accompanied by a cold bottle of Columbia Crest Chardonnay.

If you only have 2 days, I would recommend taking in the Olympic National Park. Beautiful mountains, lakes, hiking, rainforests, moss, and beaches. We did the loop in about 3 days. I think you would waste time waiting for ferries in the San Juans.

Anyone who goes to the San Juan islands had better be ready for extremely long waits for the ferry both coming and going. In the summer the ferry wait to get out there can be and often is 5 (count 'em five) hours or more holiday times and F,S or Sun. You'll get to know that parking lot in Anacortes REALLY well.

Would love some tips on what you might do differently next time. Late August, we'll be heading over to Orcas Island on a Tuesday and returning on a Friday morning. Is it best to be on the first ferry over both ways? Is the return ferry as crowded as the one from Anacortes? Thanks for any advice?

To the Orcas ferry question person: good idea to travel out to Orcas on off day like Tues. Much better than F, Sa or Sun. And <u>forget holidays </u>.
As to earliest ferry question; that's not such a good idea as the early ferry is the one local people take so lots of those (for jobs or to go on all day shopping trips to big stores not on islands or to medical appointments)locals filling the car spaces. Mid day ferries in the middle of the week are the less traveled ones (or after dark).

We just returned (yesterday) from N. WA and one of our trips was to San Juan Island from the ferry at Anacortes. We had no wait whatsoever for the ferry either way. We took the 8:40 AM ferry, got there 5 minutes before it left, and there was plenty of room. I've been told the waits are during July and August. I'm not from the area, but that's what we read. Perhaps September isn't that bad? In any event, we LOVED San Juan Island. Went whale watching while we were there. Next trip we'll try Olympia Nat'l park.

The person was asking me about a ferry FROM Orcas island and whether it was better to take the ferry FROM Orcas early in the morning and I said no, later is better. Note the question was "from Orcas" not from Anacortes.
No one from Anacortes goes out to the islands to do bulk shopping or visit doctors!