We landed at Pelican Beach, on the Northeast corner of Cypress around one pm. Our first time on this beach, we had no idea it was named for the Pelican boats, whose owners have been frequenting this very beach for decades, and had built much of the infrustructure, including the boardwalks (lovely) outhouses (as lovely as an outhouse can be) and the the picnic tables – quite nice and immensely heavy, which we discovered when we tried to move one.
We happened to be camping on Pelican Beach during a very special weekend. The builder of the the Northwest Fleet of Pelican boats, Fred Smith, was turning ninety two and he would be camping on the beach with us, along with about twenty Pelican Boats and thirty or so Pelican Boat owners. In short, we had unwittingly decided to camp in the midst of a Pelican Boat Hottenany. So much for privacy, solitude and quiet, we were camping at pelican party Central.
The only real downside to our time on Cypress was the lack of drinking water. Like many campsites in the San Juans, this one lacked a sigot. Thankfully, we brought our water filter, which I thought we would never use, but in fact it came in handy as we filled up our 10 liter dromedary bags with filtered water from the lake. We were headed north to explore the outer islands (Clark, Matia, Sucia and Patos) and freshwater would be hard to find.