Monday, October 7, 2019

Roche Harbor, Sept 19th

Goodbye to British Columbia, hello again US...




We made the short crossing from Sydney to Roche harbor on San Juan Island where we checked back into the US. We are now registered with US Customs so the check in was via app, with a brief phone call from a US Border Customs agent. We struck our Canadian courtesy flag and headed ashore to check out Roche Harbor:






Roche is very tidy and well maintained, with almost 400 slips and all the support services and resort facilities you would expect for an operation this size. I'm sure it's a zoo in the summer, but things were relatively quiet for our visit, being late in the season. The whole area is privately owned and had a similar vibe to Avalon on Catalina Island in Southern California.



Next to the airport, we found the sculpture park:













... and beyond the sculpture park was a small cemetery and the mausoleum:







The Mausoleum was built by John McMillin, who owned the Harbor and surrounding property. It was constructed with a lot of very specific (and unusual) symbolism having to do with his Biblical and Masonic beliefs. A number of family members ashes are interred here; each has a seat at the table. John's son took over the business after his death, apparently didn't share his father's interest in all this stuff, and refused to fund the completion of the Mausoleum with the planned bronze roof structure.




The Harbor property was the site of lime kilns originally built by the British Marines to keep the soldiers stationed here busy (there was some dispute back then over who owned the San Juans, US or Great Britain). When McMillin took ownership he continued the lime production and used these fairbanks-Morse generators to power the lime kiln operation.





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