Admittedly, sunshine can make all the difference and my stay on San Juan Island was gloriously sunny. However, even in the rain — which I experienced in impressive proportions as I left — it would be hard not to like a place where you navigate by old barns and fields of cows. For me, San Juan was an excellently calm stepping-stone from the bubble of the Alaskan ferry to the traffic and tribulations of my next destinations.

As luck would have it, my friend, marine mammal expert Dr Frankie Robertson, lives on the island and very kindly housed, fed and entertained me while I was there. As we drove around, Frankie brought me up to speed on the status of local marine mammal populations, ongoing studies and research questions still to be addressed. Our trip out to Lime Kiln State Park, where killer whales often cruise by close to shore, was cetacean-free but I was lucky enough to meet Jeanne Hyde, Lime Kiln’s resident killer whale expert, whose enthusiasm for all things marine was shared with energy and humour.

Friday Harbor’s Whale Museum contained an abundance of information about the Salish Sea, the local killer whales, gray whales and more. Jars of whale lice sat alongside baleen plates and patches of barnacles still attached to leathery strips of whale skin. A gray whale skeleton was suspended near that of a killer whale and, mindbogglingly, the skeleton of conjoined harbour seal twins found in 2013.

An evening walk on the island’s south coast gave us stunning views across a flat calm Strait of Juan de Fuca to the mountains of mainland Washington. Minke whales, the species we’d come looking for, eluded us. Instead, we watched synchronised teams of diving ducks, foxes in orange and black, a group of otters in the shallows, a bald eagle and grazing deer. Even better, Frankie assured me that — apart from a visitor earlier this year who’d promptly moved on — the island was bear-free. What a place!