Oysters, Lizards, and a blogger

Beginning of hike at Chuckanut Drive

I had a hard time thinking of a title for this Senior Trailblazer trip. We met at the Senior Center and discussed our options: it was already raining and the skies looked terrible over Stewart Mountain, our scheduled hike for the day. We decided to flip this week's hike with next week's, so fourteen of us headed to Chuckanut Drive to start what was to be our nine-mile (round trip) hike to Oyster Dome and back.

We also had a new hiker with us today: Kimberly from just me - alive, a blogging friend who barely qualifies to hike with us (being a grandmother and in her mid-fifties, we let her get away with it). She had been reading my blog and decided to head to Bellingham from her home twenty miles south, and visit the Trailblazers! She walked in and introduced herself. If you visit her blog (which I linked), she compares what her medical numbers were before she decided to get in shape, and what they are now. It's very inspiring.

She was worried about keeping up. It was not a problem, as she is running half-marathons and is very strong. Not to mention a very fun person and I hope she comes back! This picture was taken with the only view we had all day, as the clouds thickened and made it feel quite cold, if you can call 37 degrees (2.7 C) cold (I can). Once the rain and snow hit (see previous picture), we decided not to make the final push to Oyster Dome but instead take the trail over to Lizard Lake. This would add about a mile to our hike, but we had already accomplished most of the uphill, so off we went, crunching snow underfoot and big drops of cold rain and snow falling onto our heads and down our backs.

As you can see from these skunk cabbage sprouting up through the snow on our way to Lizard Lake, even they are emerging slowly during this cold spring. It's a full month today since the first day of spring, and they should be much farther along. We finally got to Lizard Lake and had a very cold lunch break, taking maybe twenty minutes before heading back onto the trail. Everyone was cold and a bit miserable. We took the loop over to Samish Overlook before heading back down to the cars, and we saw this from the overlook:

You are looking out from Samish Bay towards the Olympic Mountains, and Samish Island is the land mass in the foreground. The Trailblazers commented that they have never seen the tide this low, making it look like you could walk right over to the island. They called it a "minus tide." After looking up the definition, it seems to be a low tide that is actually lower than sea level, which happens occasionally but not very often. By the time we left the overlook and started back on the final push to our cars, I realized that we had covered a fair distance: almost eight miles to be exact, and we still had two miles to go.

After ten full miles and more than 2,300 elevation up and down, I feel quite justified in self-medicating with a wonderful glass of wine. After we started our final push to the cars, the sun had the audacity to come out and shine on us! People were starting up the trail as we headed down, and now as I sit at my computer I'm looking out at skies filled with more sunshine than clouds. I feel pretty darn satisfied, though, and I've met my first blogging buddy, Kimberly! It was a great day.
:-)