Hertz trail in the heat

Lake Whatcom this morning

Melanie and I again went our own way on this very sunny and very warm Thursday. I noticed that both Senior Trailblazer groups modified their schedules to hike somewhere close to large bodies of water, as did we. With the entire Pacific Northwest trapped under really warm temperatures, it seemed like a good idea, with the heat predicted to rise into the mid-eighties to low nineties (22–32°C), we headed to the trail on the southeast shore of Lake Whatcom, also known as the Hertz trail. It follows the route of a now-defunct railroad, the Bellingham Bay and Eastern Railway. It's flat and very pretty year round. 

The first of two covered bridges along the trail

When we started out, the weather was simply delightful: shady and a light breeze kept us very comfortable for the first part of the hike. We shared the trail with bikes, other walkers, many leashed dogs, and a few runners. Obviously if anyone planned a run anywhere near us, it should be early in the day. Everyone seemed to want to get an early start, too.

Planned expansion of the trail system

Just before we came to the bridge, we saw this sign telling us of the expansion of the trail system: there will be a trail that connects the Hertz trail to the other existing trail in the area, the Chanterelle trail. You can see the red line at the bottom of the notice that explains where it will be constructed. It looks like it will be quite steep going both directions, which means I might not be doing it myself, with my old knees complaining just to look at the description.

Pretty tiny yellow flowers

The trail is beginning to show the lack of any recent rain, but I hoped these little yellow flowers would show up better than they did. I didn't manage to take very many pictures today, so this is all you get. We saw some almost-finished foxglove flowers, but there's not much left to bloom in late July.

More Lake Whatcom

Although this picture doesn't look much different from the first one, by this time it was beginning to really heat up. Much of our shade was gone, as the sun rose up over the ridge and began to make us feel ready to get out of the sun. We only walked around five nice flat miles, but I was so glad to finally get inside Mel's lovely air-conditioned car and call it a day. Well, at least a morning. We finished by noon, and for a very warm day, I think we did very well indeed.

:-)