Spencer Jack's PNW Island Orcas Mystery Solved

Incoming email this morning from Spencer Jack and his favorite dad, my nephew Jason, with a subject line of...

"Beautiful PNW Day".

Text in the email asking...

"Do you recognize this PNW location Spencer and I visited today"

For those not familiar with the PNW abbreviation, PNW abbreviates Pacific Northwest.

The email included three photos, including the one you see above.

And the one below.

I was fairly sure I knew the location in question when I saw the photo at the top. The second photo confirmed that I knew the location I was looking at.

Behind Jason and Spencer Jack in that second photo you are looking at a structure constructed by the Civilian Conversation Corps back in 1936, modeled after a medieval watch tower.

The CCC was an evil socialist plot launched by FDR during the Great Depression. There are CCC structures in parks all over the Puget Sound zone.

This CCC structure is an observational tower atop the summit of Mount Constitution.

Mount Constitution is the most prominent feature, elevation-wise, of the San Juan Islands, which means Spencer Jack took his dad on a ferry ride to Orcas Island, which is where Mount Constitution is located in Moran State Park.

In addition to being the highest spot in the San Juan Islands, Mount Constitution is the second highest mountain on an island in a ocean location in the lower 48 American states.

For those reading this in Fort Worth, Texas, who do not know what an island is, what you see behind Spencer Jack, surrounded by water, are islands. Spencer Jack is standing on an island. These islands were not created by digging a ditch into which polluted river water was diverted. These are real islands. Lots of them, as in hundreds of islands of various sizes make up the San Juan Island archipelago.

No bridge connects the American mainland to any of the San Juan Islands. Access to these islands is via boat, small and large, with the large boats being the multiple ferry boats which take one from Fidalgo Island, and the town of Anacortes, to the islands.

Fidalgo Island is not one of the San Juan Islands. One does access Fidalgo Island via several bridge options, all of which were built over actual water in way less than four years, including that iconic PNW actual signature bridge connecting Fidalgo Island to Whidbey Island over the swift moving tidal waters of Deception Pass.

Meanwhile in that aforementioned Fort Worth town, we are almost to year six of trying to build three simple little bridges over dry land, to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island.

I doubt ferry boats will ever be needed...

Is Fort Worth's Panther Island One Of The Best Islands In America?

I saw this this morning on CNN online and thought to myself two things.

First off, I thought that looks like the San Juan Islands in my old zone of Washington CNN is using for article headline illustrative purposes.

Second off, I wondered if Fort Worth's imaginary Panther Island is on CNN's list of The best islands in America.

I jest, sarcastically.

No one in America outside the Fort Worth bubble of nonsense will ever think  Fort Worth's former industrial wasteland is an island, even if the cement lined ditch is ever dug under the three simple little bridges stuck in slow motion construction, with the imaginary island already called Panther Island by the boondogglers who have foisted the ridiculousness on the hapless town.

Such only illicit chuckles from those who know what an actual island is and have actually seen, and been on, an actual island. Sane Fort Worth natives worry this imaginary island boondoggle nonsense will turn Fort Worth into a National Joke. I fear that boat has already sailed, but not to Panther Island.

Of course the CNN article makes no mention of Fort Worth's imaginary Panther Island.

In the article's first paragraph the best island listers apologize to those well known islands which did not make the best island list...

So first, our deepest, breeziest apologies to Alcatraz, Manhattan, Molokai, Key West, Whidbey Island, Isle Royale, Gasparilla, Chincoteague, Jekyll, South Padre, northern Minnesota and dozens more escape-worthy island hubs from sea to great lake to gulf to bay to shining sea -- all of which will surely be featured in upcoming "best islands" travel sequels.

Yeah, I'm sure in a future CNN article about America's best islands, published sometime, I don't know, maybe in the next century, might include Fort Worth's Panther Island. That is, if global warming gets as bad as feared and the Gulf of Mexico grows inland far enough to create a real island inside the Fort Worth city limits.

That list CNN made of other escape worthy islands includes Whidbey Island.

When I lived in the neighborhood I probably visited Whidbey Island more than any other Washington island. Whidbey is accessed by a ferry from the west side of Puget Sound and another ferry from the Olympic Peninsula side of Puget Sound. And from the north via Deception Pass bridge. An actual signature bridge, a feat of engineering, built in about a year over swift moving, deep, tidal waters.

Unlike Fort Worth's pitiful little bridges which the town has been trying to build over dry land for over four years now, with the latest imaginary completion date at some point in 2020.

Read the The best islands in America article and the descriptions of the best islands in America, including the San Juan Islands, which were also in my neighborhood, but which I visited far less frequently than Whidbey Island. Read the CNN article's description of ORCAS ISLAND AND THE SAN JUANS and then picture a similar blurb in the future about Fort Worth's Panther Island to get yet one more sense of how absurd this Fort Worth island delusion is.

Or I can just copy the CNN article's ORCAS ISLAND AND THE SAN JUANS blurb for your reading pleasure...

ORCAS ISLAND AND THE SAN JUANS

Floating Near: Seattle
Famous For: Making visitors wish this was a one-way trip
Fun Times Ahead: Orcas Island Jazz Festival (August 30-September 2)

Over 170 named islands and hundreds more at low tide comprise Washington's San Juan archipelago. But, for now, a brief word on the three biggies -- all accessible by the Washington State Ferry system and hampered only by crappy car lines on summer weekends.

San Juan Island, the namesake and hub of this chain, is your best bet for shopping and paddling through killer whale country.

Lopez Island, the quietest and flattest, is a magnet for cyclists.

Orcas Island, the "Gem of the San Juans," is for wishing you could afford property here -- and for driving slowly and aimlessly with the windows down on hilly, empty, sun-dappled backroads with names like "Enchanted Forest" and "Dolphin Bay."

Then dipping through a quiet green valley dead-ending at some tiny harbor where an old man on a bicycle is walking his seven dogs along the road. Before driving up into Moran State Park and to the top of 2,409-foot Mt. Constitution for views of Mt. Rainier, British Columbia and everything in between on a clear day.

Then rolling past pottery shacks, sculpture gardens and back onto Main Street, Eastsound (a.k.a. "town") where the ferry boat awaits near those sigh-inducing realty office window posts.