Two-fer walk today

Service road and lots of ferns

Another day with just two of us, and we decided to go for an old favorite, Fragrance Lake. When we arrived at the trailhead, we saw signs that the service road going to the lake is blocked off at about the two-mile mark. We could have gone up the trail, which we usually do, but we wanted to see the damage done to the road, so we went up that way.

Although I didn't get any pictures of the washout, we did find a couple of hikers who took some pictures, and so we headed back down after taking a look at them. There is a small area that people have been using to get around the closure, but we weren't interested in trying it. We had a few options: go back to the parking lot and take the trail (which would have made this a much longer hike than usual), or just call it a day and maybe head down to Squalicum Harbor and walk there for a bit, to make our hike into maybe five miles altogether (that might be stretching it). In the meantime, we were treated to the usually small waterfall, which has turned into a torrent.

Quite the display

It is the result of our record-setting rainfall for the month of November: 14.57 inches in Bellingham! And everywhere there are washed-out roads and areas in our town, with (I hate to say it) more rain still to come. Fortunately we had a brief time this morning to enjoy ourselves without any rain.

We walked another half-mile or so past the falls before turning around and heading back to the parking lot.

The falls from another angle

You can see in this picture how much misty spray is coming down, along with all that water. It goes underneath the road here, and we could see signs that during the worst of it, the water went over the road. But not today, thank goodness.

Dappled sunlight for a brief moment

As we moseyed back down, it was so nice to see a few bits of sunlight, after so much rain. We decided, once we got back to the car, to drive over to the harbor and walk until we got our regulation number of steps in. 

Squalicum Harbor

We didn't go far, since my tummy told me we were close to noon and I wanted to have some lunch. I hadn't brought anything but a few nutrition bars, so I convinced Mel that we should just head to our respective home and have lunch there. She agreed.

Rose hips

Although the flowers are pretty much gone now, there are abundant rose hips available for anybody who might want to make some tea. You can also see that there were no longer any peeks of sunshine, just more clouds. But the harbor was a gentle place for us to get more steps without wearing ourselves out. It was an easy day, but one I enjoyed very much. I hope the other Trailblazers, who were attempting a ten-miler, had as good a day as we had.

:-)