Anacortes plus Trailblazer hike

To tell you the truth I didn't know if we were going to hike or just sit around the table and drink coffee and visit today as I left home for today's hike. We had a terrific wind storm during the night and when I woke up we had no power and part of our fence had blown over.

Knowing our "fearless leader" Pat wouldn't take us anywhere unsafe, I brought my hiking gear to see what was in store for us.

9 brave souls showed up at the Bellingham Senior activity center. The wind was still blowing pretty strong when we left. The plan was to hike the trails in Washington park then head over to the Tommy Thompson trail, so two hikes in one day.

I looked up the last time our group had hiked this and it was July 2014. It was another not great weather day in Bellingham that ended up being a wonderful Anacortes hiking day. You can read that post HERE. 

Before we began hiking I checked out an app on my iphone "windalert" to see what the local winds were near where we would be hiking.

Here's a screenshot of the hours leading up to our hike, a high gust of over 70 mph, wow! -

We started the hike by walking a short ways on the loop road before joining the trail. Just before we got on the trail we went down to the beach to enjoy the views.

We walked a short ways on the trail and found a tree crossing our path.

Pat showed us his map for the trail through the park, the trail posts were marked with colors instead of names/numbers like most trail systems.

 The area is full of Madrona's and an oddity to the area Rocky mountain junipers. We walked through an area with Glacial carvings along a large rock.

 Then up to a wonderful open area that reminded me of the headlands near Sausalito, California.

 We saw some early spring flowers and a few deer as we walked along.

We came down to the parking lot for lunch, most went to the protection of the trees (out of the wind) but a couple couldn't resist going down to the beach and sitting in the sun. After I ate my lunch in the trees, I went down to see what I had missed, boy am I glad I did.

Panorama photo below

Even though the wind was blowing, we were fairly protected in the forest. There was a bit of blown down branches from earlier storms, but I never felt unsafe while we were walking. 

You never know where your safe harbor will be, for us it was Anacortes.

First hike endomondo stats:

 total miles hiked - 3.05 miles

minimum altitude - minus 15 feet

maximum altitude - 229 feet

total ascent - 449 feet

 total descent - 464 feet

Second hike endomondo stats:

(a city trail, you can see a photo of it in the above link from 2014)

total miles hiked - 4 miles

 minimum altitude - 2 feet

maximum altitude - 62 feet

total ascent - 36 feet

total descent - 67 feet