It all starts in Fairhaven hike

Today's hike found us starting at Boulevard park. I usually blog a Trailblazer hike on Thursday's but the reason I started hiking with the Trailblazers has changed. At that time my option was to hike alone during the week and I didn't think that wise or enjoyable, so I was very excited to find a group to join that had regular weekly hikes. You can read about my first day as a Senior Trailblazer HERE. 

It's now possible for my husband to hike with me on Thursday's so I now have a weekly "hiking buddy". 

Yay!

Anyway as I was saying, we started at Boulevard park. It was a bit dark and breezy for our start. 

There is a bush by the Woods coffee shop in the park that likes to bloom in the winter. People that aren't from around here are always excited to see it and think it's a freak early bloom, but it blooms there every winter. 

As we walked up the Taylor dock "South Bay" trail, we saw a poor sailboat that had been beached in the last wind storm. We were hoping that someone would move it while the tide was still high. With the keel being at an angle it would be nearly impossible to move at a lower tide.

We walked through Fairhaven and joined the Interurban trail to the North Chuckanut Trail head parking lot. From there we went to the Hemlock trail and then on down to Chuckanut falls for lunch.

Contrasting colors

A sea of ferns on the hillside

Chuckanut falls

The falls were flowing pretty full, it made for a nice view while we ate.

https://youtu.be/YNBVcPh1mXg

Many times when I am out on the trails, the mossy trees remind me so much of the Olympic peninsula's rain forest. 

After lunch we went through Arroyo park and crossed Old Samish hwy again to the Interurban trail. We then made our way into the Hundred Acre woods. 

I looked up into a branch and saw raindrops on the fir needles, in the light it looked like sparkling diamonds.

If you enlarge the photo below you will see many diamonds sparkling in the right of the photo.

Sparkling water drops

After meandering through the forest trails we soon made our way to Fairhaven park.

Back on the South Bay trail we ended where we began - Boulevard park, and what was the update on the beached sailboat? Sad to say it was still there and the tide was on it's way out.

We enjoyed our day together, and capped it off with a warm coffee from the Woods coffee shop.

We only had a few raindrops fall on us as we hiked.
Pretty perfect if you ask me.

Garmin stats:

total miles hiked - 10 miles

total ascent - 1991 feet

total descent - 1204 feet