I’ve already told you about my big, fancy jet flights on Alaska, but if you need a runway, you aren’t doing real flying. Once we arrived in Seattle, we went to lunch at a brewery on Lake Union, and then we headed over to Kenmore Air’s terminal on the lake for a seaplane ride to Deer Harbor on Orcas Island in the San Juans.

The terminal building looked fairly new, and it was easy to find thanks to a giant billboard in front.

The first thing you see when you walk in is swag. There is a ton of merchandise available for sale. The next thing you see is the tiny ticket counter.

We went to check in, and all was fine until we got to the luggage. We had a 25 lb limit per person, but with our carry-ons we were both over. They acted like this was a grave problem, and they made multiple calls to see if they could accommodate us. We were cleared, but we had to pay the fee for overage. It said $3 per pound on the sign, but somehow we were only charged $10 total for about 20 pounds of overage between the two of us. Go figure.

The waiting room was packed, because Kenmore has inexplicably scheduled all of its flights to go at the same time. But there is a balcony with chairs that had a couple seats available so we went out and watched as the fleet came in, including our 70+ year-old Otter.

We were the third flight to be called for boarding. To keep everyone separate, they handed out laminated boarding passes with letters on them. We were on flight B “for beautiful” as they said. I’m not sure if they stole that from Alaska or vice versa.

When we went down the ramp to wait for our pilot to board us, we got our first surprise. We were lumped in with people going to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. Despite being sold as separate flights, they had apparently combined them and Roche was up first. Bummer.

Dock hands loaded up roller boards into the floats themselves, and the pilot — Captain Mike — took the other carry-ons and put them in the back. We were told to take row 1. This sounded great until I found out you can sit next to the pilot in what I’ll call row 0. Someone else got that privilege.

Kenmore Air 130
July 2, 2025

Captain Mike did a safety briefing and then told us that it had been windy and bumpy and not fun much of the day. He also said the winds at Roche had shifted three times, and there were a ton of boats in the harbor so we would have to land far away and taxi for awhile. But wait, there’s more: sometimes the wind pushes them off the dock and they have to try multiple times. As one of our fellow passengers said, “got any good news for us?”

We pushed off the dock late since they had other airplanes get out first, but we didn’t have to taxi long before lurching forward toward the north and into the sky, making a quick turn left to head out to Puget Sound.

Captain Mike climbed up to 6,500 feet, higher than they would normally go, but it was a smooth ride up there. He said others decided to stay low, but they were really fighting it the whole way. Glad he went high. There were some clouds coming off the Olympic Peninsula as we made our way north. We passed Port Townsend and into the open straits.

Once we were nearly abeam Victoria, we began to descend into Roche. It was a pretty exciting approach that saw us touch down in the water in a narrow point. Then, we did have to taxi for quite awhile past some very big boats full of rich people before easing into the dock.

In less than 10 minutes, everyone had gotten off, but there was nobody getting back on. So, Captain Mike and three of us passengers continued on. This time, we taxied out to the north and hung a right before getting into the air for the quick six minute flight.

This trip was low and slow and absolutely beautiful. We got over to Orcas Island in no time and did a spiraling descent before landing pretty far away from the dock once again.

By the time we had reached the dock, we had spent twice as much time taxiing than flying on that second run.

Captain Mike grabbed our bags out of the float, and we were off for a few days with friends.

Only three days later we were preparing to fly back to Seattle.

Check-in was like no other. There is no online option. There’s no flight status. We just left our friends’ place half an hour before scheduled departure and walked down to the dock. My wife grabbed some coffee, and we sat in the morning sun waiting for our plane to show up.

Soon enough, two airplanes came in rapid succession. The first was a Beaver that taxied up to the dock. The second was an Otter that did donuts waiting for the Beaver to get out of his way. I guess this is rush hour at Deer Harbor.

I was hoping for a ride on the Beaver, but it was not to be. That pilot called one person’s name, boarded her, and then said something about heading off to Friday Harbor next. Once she was onboard, he pushed off the dock and our Otter came in.

This pilot walked off to call names, and there was none of the drama about baggage weights we had at Lake Union. He also didn’t load anything into the float. He just took the bags from each person, threw them in the back, and told us to take any seat.

Kenmore Air 111
July 5, 2025

I was the last one onboard, and my wife took the last seat in the cabin. I got a giant grin on my face, because I knew that meant I was riding shotgun.

I took my seat in this ancient bird, and scarcely had time to orient myself before we were off the dock and into the air. This cockpit was a mix of old and new, and I spent the first few minutes staring at the old steam gauges alongside the GPS.

It was a beautiful morning, and I don’t think the GPS was needed. The plan appeared to be “Take off, find Mt Rainier, fly that way.” And so, we did.

We passed over the same islands that we saw on the way up, just a thousand feet lower. I didn’t have a headset, and the pilot wasn’t talkative at all, so I just alternated staring between the window and the gauges.

We got over the mainland and made our approach by circling around from the northeast. Lake Union looks remarkably small from altitude, even moreso with the giant Lake Washington not far to the east.

We came in high, and then as we approached the edge of the lake, the airplane turned into a dive bomber. This seems to be the regular approach, but it’s definitely a different feeling than on a landplane. After clearing boats below us, we plunked down and had a long rollout until we were basically at the dock. But then we had to wait for someone ahead of us to get on the dock first. Finally, we got there, a few minutes ahead of schedule.

With the plane docked and the engines off, I asked the pilot if he was building hours or if this was a career. He said he had more than enough hours. I can imagine this is just some really fun flying to do.

Once we hopped off, we had a Lyft come and get us and about 10 minutes later we were at our Seattle hotel for a couple of days.

I’ve flown on seaplanes before, but that’s been for fun. This was an actual mode of transportation, and it’s just so much fun. Kenmore was quirky, but it was a great experience.

If you’d like to see video highlights, please enjoy about 8 minutes of airplane action.