Hertz Trail and Whatcom Park

Lake Whatcom from Hertz trail

 Today, my friend Melanie and I walked the entire 6+-mile trail (round trip) on the north shore of Lake Whatcom. It's a lovely place, and I've been on it in sunshine, rain, and snow, with comfortable to freezing temperatures. Since the weather would be cloudy all day, with a chance of rain, we decided against traveling out of town. It was a good choice: we kept up a brisk pace as we navigated the out-and-back trail, noticing that they have done a good deal of work on it lately, possibly getting ready for the winter weather to come.

Cute whale rock

When we got to the terminus, this little rock was there to greet us, left there by an anonymous artist. On the back, it said simply, "Whatcom Rock." No signature, but I was pleased to see it and placed it carefully back in its original position.

Remains of an old pier

There wasn't much new to see on this familiar walk, but I gazed at the stumps of a long-ago pier and thought of what this place looked like back then, when our wide and pretty trail had another use.

The Hertz Trail follows an old logging railroad bed along the fairly wild northern shore of massive Lake Whatcom, one of the largest natural lakes in the state. 

Yesterday, I went on another short walk in Whatcom Falls Park, not far away from today's walk. We (myself, along with my friend Lily) made our way down to the falls, to see what they look like at this time of the year. With the changing leaves and a respectable amount of water rushing by, it was a lovely scene.

Whatcom Falls from the bridge

I've shown this exact photo many different times in the past, but yesterday's view was especially memorable. The sound of the water and the mist in the air made us stop for several minutes just to take it all in.

Spider web art

Walking back to the car, I saw this spider web, sans spider, as we kept looking in the bushes for ripe blackberries. We did find some delicious ones (actually, Lily has an unerring eye for them) and since they were perfect, we stopped looking for more and just enjoyed the aftermath of the tasty fruit before heading home.

I was happy for the two outings, and again allowed myself to be very grateful for all the wonderful places I can choose to enjoy here in Bellingham. I hope you will also have a chance to get out and about!

:-)

Meet Dirty Dan

"Dirty Dan" Harris sculpture

I promised I'd let you know a little bit about this character and his life when I wrote about the other two sculptures in the vicinity. I didn't know much about him before I looked up his biography today, other than that he was the founder of the town of Fairhaven.

The link I found has some interesting facts about this guy. He arrived here from the East Coast between 1826 and 1833, after having sailed the seas as a whaler. He finished a log cabin begun by an earlier settler who died, and obtained legal title to 146 acres, which became the main part of Fairhaven's downtown. Fairhaven, Sehome, Whatcom, and Bellingham combined to become one town in 1903. But Fairhaven was the place where Dirty Dan began to make his fortune. He was, according to the article, "a shabby looking guy, hence the nickname Dirty Dan." From HistoryLink.org:

He typically wore a well-worn hat, greasy coat, unbuttoned red flannel undershirt, and pants that were ripped and occasionally held up with rope. Shoes and socks were something of a novelty for him in his younger years, though he did wear them when he was on the road. He loved his liquor and could hold it as well as any man.

But as he gained his first wealth, mostly from the sale of bootleg liquor, he cleaned up and then began to sell property in the new town of Fairhaven.  By 1883, he had amassed close to a half million dollars (in 2014 dollars). And he began to clean up his appearance:

He bought a new wardrobe — a silk hat, fine black cutaway coat, and matching pants, real pants, sans ropes, and a white vest. Yet he didn't pull it off entirely. He still wore his red flannel undershirt, no tie, cowhide shoes (still an improvement from no shoes at all), and his coat and pants were often dotted with spots and stains. 

There is much more information about this interesting man on that link. He died in 1890, I guess somewhere in his seventies. I enjoyed learning about him and now will walk down Harris Avenue in Fairhaven with renewed respect.
:-)

Sauk Mountain memories

Mt. Baker peekaboo on Sauk Mountain 2013

The Senior Trailblazers are hiking up Sauk Mountain today, without me. Note: see below; they went somewhere else after all.) I figured maybe it was time for me to reminisce about some of my earlier visits to the mountain. My knee is still a little wonky, and this hike is pretty challenging on the uphill. The trail winds interminably up the side of a mountain, and while it's not long, it is definitely steep. So I stayed home.

In 2013, when this picture was taken, I realized that I had left my trusty camera at home, and it's the first time I ended up taking lots of wonderful camera shots with my phone. I was simply amazed at the quality, and so it was also the last time I carried another camera. According to my blog, I've been on this hike with the Trailblazers five times, and each time I got some tremendous pictures. The first year was in 2009, ten years ago.

Switchbacks up the mountainside 2017

This picture shows the steep switchbacks that take you to the ridge above. It's claimed a few lives lately, with two people in two subsequent years slipping on the steep dusty trail and falling to their deaths. It was one factor in my consideration about whether to risk it today or not. I am not feeling my best, and after yesterday's colonoscopy, my balance is also a little off. There's always next year.

Looking down at Sauk Lake

Only once in my trips up Sauk Mountain did we end up taking the side trail down to the lake. It's another mile and around 1,000 feet down, and the trail is not as well traveled, so there were a few places where it wasn't obvious, but we made it. Of course Richard decided to go swimming, which he almost always does when there's a body of water, summer or winter.

Heading down to the lake in 2016

The one thing I remember the most about the trip to the lake (other than having to climb back up) were the numerous bugs: flies and mosquitos seemed impervious to my repellent. The entire trip only covered a mere six miles in total, but the elevation gain and loss was considerable. I hope to get a good trip report for today's hike and will add an addendum if I do indeed get one.

(News Flash: Melanie just texted me that they didn't even do Sauk Mountain but went to Park Butte instead! Oh well. Here's a picture of the group that Melanie sent me.)

The Park Butte crowd (taken by Melanie)

Note about yesterday's colonoscopy: the good news is that I don't have any obvious signs of cancer, but I did have a few small polyps (3-4 mm in size) removed. The bad news is that I apparently have a rare condition: a tortuous colon, which meant that my highly skilled doctor had to work hard to accomplish the procedure, but she did, and for that I am very grateful.
:-)

One small step

Buzz Aldrin captured Neil Armstrong's image in visor

"The Eagle has landed" is the phrase these two astronauts radioed back to Earth when the landing module (named Eagle) touched down on the lunar surface. Today is the fiftieth anniversary of that momentous day, and who alive then doesn't remember just where they were when it happened? I was in my mid-twenties, a housewife and secretary, and since it happened on a Sunday, I was at home watching the entire event play out on TV.

I have just spent the last hour reading different articles commemorating the anniversary, and remembering what I felt when it happened. It was simply mind-boggling that we tiny humans had made it to another planet within my lifetime. Of course, we all thought that it was just the beginning of space travel, but after a total of 12 different men walked on the moon and returned, it just fizzled. We were in the throes of the Vietnam War at the time, and many other things were deemed more important. And I can only imagine how much all that space travel cost: why, it was probably more than the war effort. (I don't really want to know, but I do sometimes wonder why we gave up space travel so easily.)

Today, I also found out that an astonishing 5% of Americans don't believe it ever happened. There are lots of articles laying out the most common conspiracy theories. I'll leave it to my readers who might be interested in them to do a little research on your own. It's quite fascinating.

Flag "blowing" in nonexistent breeze

I well remember seeing this picture and also wondering why the flag was moving without an atmosphere. In case you wondered, it wasn't: it was wired to look like it was blowing in the breeze. I learned from this article (from The Atlantic) that when the Eagle module took off, the exhaust caused the flag to fall into the moondust. And what does it look like now?

The flag, made of nylon, was an off-the-shelf purchase. Unlike Earth, the moon lacks an atmosphere capable of blocking out the worst of the sun’s rays. It wouldn’t have taken long for the ultraviolet light to eat away at the dye and bleach the flag white. 

Well, maybe it's time for us to go back and plant some new improved flags! In any event, it's a wonderful event to mark, and I'm privileged to still be around to celebrate it fifty years later.
:-)

It ain't over till it's over

Yogi Berra 1953

Last Thursday on our hike, somehow we got to talking about Yogi Berra. Although I'd heard his name often enough and knew he was a famous baseball player, the thing I knew most about him was his "Yogi-isms." From Wikipedia:

Berra was also well known for his impromptu pithy comments, malapropisms, and seemingly unintentional witticisms, known as "Yogi-isms." His "Yogi-isms" very often took the form of either an apparent tautology or a contradiction, but often with an underlying and powerful message that offered not just humor, but wisdom.

We managed to come up with several of them, and they had us laughing as we regaled each other with our favorites. My own favorite is told that when giving directions to Joe Garagiola Sr. to his New Jersey home, which was accessible by two routes: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Another favorite is "You can observe a lot by watching."

I didn't know much about him before looking him up at that link, but I learned that he was an amazing catcher and hitter for the New York Yankees for many seasons. He was only 5'7" tall, but apparently he was able "both to swing the bat like a golf club to hit low pitches for deep home runs and to chop at high pitches for line drives."

His combination of bat control and plate coverage made Berra a feared "clutch hitter," proclaimed by rival manager Paul Richards "the toughest man in the league in the last three innings." 

And he was a legendary catcher as well. All of this information was news to me, until looking him up on Google. Many books have been written about him, and in 2005, The Economist named him "The Wisest Fool of the Past Fifty Years," based on his manner of speaking. He lived a good long life and died in his sleep at the age of 90, in 2015. If you're interested, that Wikipedia link will give you much more information about this unique and delightful person.
:-)

Potpourri

Nice perch

When I went to the post office this morning to check the mailbox, I kept hearing the plaintiff squawk of this gull. When I finally located him and saw the sky behind, I whipped out my phone and captured this picture. I wonder if he was calling for his mate. Two squawks and then apparently listening, over and over.

Last week when I went walking with the ladies, there were 23 of us. Today, only ten showed up, and we walked hills and trails for more than five miles and then went our separate ways. I sure do enjoy this time at the beginning of the weekend as a way to set the day's exercise on the right track.

I heard a distressing statistic yesterday while watching PBS, which had a short segment on the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team, which now has its own flag and anthem. When they walked out during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, they displayed little flags with the Olympic symbol of five interlocked rings. A non-profit group called the Refugee Nation commissioned artists to develop a flag and write a national anthem. From that link:

The flag is a banner of bright orange crossed by a single black band—colors that evoke the life jackets so many refugees have worn on their journeys to safety. “If you’ve worn a lifejacket as a refugee, you will feel something when you see this flag,” says Amsterdam-based Syrian refugee Yara Said, who designed the flag.

Refugee Olympic team's flag

 For more information about who is on the team and how it was founded, read the Wikipedia page about them. What I also learned from that piece on PBS, is that there are now an unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world who have been forced from their homes. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement. These statistics are from the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

I was simply stunned when I heard these statistics and thought I had heard wrong, but no, this is really happening. One out of every 113 people who are alive in the world today is affected, and more than half of them are from Syria. The UNHCR receives most of its funding from voluntary contributions, as well as the European Union.

The Refugee Olympic Team may not be winning any medals, but they carry the heart and soul of many countries as they compete. I am humbled by their courage.
:-}

Making peace with my name

I was supposed to be just "Jan"

Back when I was born, mothers were kept in the hospital for nine or ten days. As you can see from this little snippet from my birth certificate, I was born at Hanford Sanitarium in California, because my father was stationed at the time at an Air Force Base that didn't have its own maternity ward. As you can see from the time she spent in the hospital prior to my birth (two hours), she was obviously not ill.

But that's not the reason I took a picture of this. It's because of that first name, written in a different handwriting and short of stuck in. Well, that's because it was: my paternal grandmother, Dorothy, decided on her own that she would go into the hospital records and insert a proper first name on the birth certificate. Mama found out after the fact. As you can imagine, I was NEVER called "Dorothy" in the years when I was growing up.

She (the Dorothy in question) also never allowed us to call her anything but "Mommy," although she was actually only my father's mother. Didn't matter: this cheeky woman was very strong-willed and everyone did as she said. Here's a picture of her with her three sons.

Marlow, Mommy, my dad, and Jack

She also gave birth to a daughter, but I never met her. For some reason I was never able to know for sure, she disowned Edith long before I was around. And nobody was telling. But I decided a few decades ago to add the initial "D" to the beginning of my name, becoming "DJan," which is unique enough to make it easy for me to find myself on Google. Anyway, that's the story of how I became DJan, and now I'm quite fond of it. "Jan" is still nice, though, which is what my family has always called me.
:-)

A momentous week

Terry showing what's left of Chuckanut Creek

My morning walk with the ladies started at the Ferry Terminal and traveled down to the Arroyo Park trailhead and over the bridge that spans Chuckanut Creek. I was really shocked to see how little water is in the creek, and we are just now starting our normal dry season. In the fall, the salmon spawn in this creek, but who knows what will happen this fall? Terry would normally be standing in water to mid-calf. Not this year. And hot? We Pacific Northwesterners are not used to this kind of heat, and it's just beginning. Our summer usually starts (read: dries out) after the 4th of July.

But! Most momentous of all this week are the two Supreme Court rulings that surprised me. The Obamacare challenge worried me the most, because if they had ruled against it, the cost of everybody's insurance would have skyrocketed. I was so relieved when I heard the news that I woke up Smart Guy (it was 7:00am here) and told him about it. And that the ruling was 6-3 surprised me even more.

And then yesterday, they affirmed that gays have the right to marry in every state in the nation. This one was a 5-4 decision, but still, it means that we have now joined twelve other nations in recognizing that we are all equal under the law. I didn't expect this one.

Oh, and we got our advance directives for our end-of-life care notarized and filed, and today I sold my skydiving gear to a wonderful young woman. What a week! It will take me awhile to integrate it all.
:-)

Some Bellingham murals

Mural at the corner of Holly and Bay Streets

Today, after our usual morning walk, I went exploring around Old Town in Bellingham looking for some murals I'd noticed before. There are plenty of them all around town, but this one has captured my interest for quite awhile. I went looking for some information about the artist (or artists) but I was unable to find out anything on line.

Whatcom County Railway & Light Co.

This closeup of the left-hand side of the mural made me wonder about the name on the building and what it was all about in the history of the town. Here's what I found:

By 1902, Stone & Webster had acquired the Fairhaven and New Whatcom. Over the next several months Northern Railway and Improvement sold the rest of its holdings which included Fairhaven Electric Light, Power and Motor Company and the Whatcom-Fairhaven Gas Company. Stone & Webster organized these under the umbrella name of the Whatcom County Railway and Light Company. (from this link)

Apparently, at the turn of the last century several businessmen from California wanted to make Bellingham into an urban area to rival Seattle and Tacoma.  But for whatever reason it didn't happen. I'm glad, since the town today is just the right size for me.

The mural below is just a short distance away on Prospect Street; I took a picture of it, since I pass by it every day in the bus. It's got so much detail but all I've learned about it is that it's a story of Salmon Woman and the Native Americans who were here first (I think).

Down the street from the museum

Bellingham was a major center for salmon fishing. At one time, the largest salmon processing plant in the world was located in the Fairhaven district. By 1925, eight salmon canneries were doing business in Bellingham Bay. This took quite a toll on the salmon, obviously, and pretty much decimated the salmon runs until the traps they used were banned. Slowly they returned to a new normal, but most fishermen moved north to Alaska where the salmon were more abundant.

I'll spend some time taking pictures of the murals in Fairhaven one of these days and will share those with you, too. I love Bellingham, can you tell?
:-)

A fabulous series and a fine walk

The view from the ferry terminal this morning

Today is supposed to be sunny, eventually, but this is how it looked as we ladies started out our five-mile walk from the ferry terminal this morning. I love the changing color of the trees and thought about cropping out the cars and trucks, but I didn't after fiddling with it a bit. It's the trees I wanted to show you, along with the fog. There is still fog outside, even though it's four hours later. It will be gone eventually, but who knows how long before it lifts? Nevertheless, we had a really nice dry walk at a brisk pace.

I am more than halfway through the Ken Burns series on The Roosevelts. I have already learned so much! I didn't know that FDR (Franklin Roosevelt) was 39 when he contracted polio, how it affected his life and how he dealt with it. Last night I watched the fourth in the series of seven, and it was so informative that I watched it again, with Smart Guy joining me. I have three more episodes to go, and I'm looking forward to them very much. I know that at least one of them will teach me a great deal about the life of Eleanor Roosevelt, who redefined what it meant to be the First Lady. I was also reminded that it was only a little more than a century ago (1920) that the 19th Amendment to the Constitution finally gave women the right to vote. That simply boggles my mind.

Anyway, if you get a chance to see that series, don't miss it. Ken Burns amazes me at the way he takes archival footage and brings it to life. And I'm also hoping that the fog will lift tomorrow early enough to let me get my knees in the breeze at Skydive Snohomish. My last season of skydiving is fast coming to a close.
:-)