Stretching: I got to Friday Harbor on a Thursday*

* to the tune of "Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City" if that wasn't obvious.

It's hard to know how to absorb news when you're on vacation. You are at a distance from your everyday life, mentally as well as physically. Even with smart phones (do we have to keep using "smart" to identify what kind of phone we mean? I say no), it's still easy to feel disconnected from current events. And when the news is sad or bad or awful, it's extra hard to know what to do. Everywhere you look, there are other vacationers feeling the same disconnection, eating ice cream cones and buying coffee and taking selfies.

Maybe at breakfast tomorrow, someone among the seven couples staying at our B&B will say something like "Isn't it terrible about what happened in France yesterday?" And then we'll have to be wary about navigating around everyone's political views. Or some will be wary, and some won't. Or nobody will say anything.

I'll let you know which of those things happens.

So we're back in the USA, in the San Juan Islands of Washington, via the VW beetle and a one-hour

ferry trip to Friday Harbor. Very smooth and pleasant. Some of the islands look serenely unpopulated.

This island (San Juan) is full of tourists. That's fine. What are we if not tourists?

We ate lunch and killed some time in town while waiting to check in to our B&B (perfectly serviceable if not entirely adorable). Later we drove about 20 minutes to Roche Harbor where we had our belated anniversary dinner (42 years and 1 week) during a sudden downpour, and then explored the harbor and marina under a rainbow.