A rainy day walk and some other weather tales

I'm a weather junkie. I like to watch it, and be in it. I enjoy looking at forecasts and love to look at weather history stats. We've had alot of sun lately and this morning I woke to rain, so I looked up the "dry" weather stats for Bellingham. If you look at the chart HERE, you can see we've hardly had any since the first week of June.

I enjoyed my rain walk, it almost felt like the cobwebs had been washed from my brain!

My husband and I did a 48ish mile bike ride last weekend on a "new to us" trail that was paved only for about 1 mile of it. The rest was sections of: gravel, rocks of various sizes, dirt, fir needle and sand. The map board made it seem to be fairly straight forward, but we found that there were a couple of places that we needed to do some detour route finding. I'm glad that I have a hybrid bike, it was not a skinny tire friendly surface most of the way. 

The trail is called the "Cascade" trail. 

It begins in Sedro-Woolley and goes to Concrete.  The trail starts about a mile away from where we started. We started at the Hammer Heritage Square in Sedro Woolley and rode to Concrete for lunch at the local Bakery and then returned to Sedro- Woolley. I brought this up ride up, because we rode against the wind the last several miles. I loved it! I've always enjoyed just standing in powerful winds and feeling it against my face. I really enjoyed the trail, it had some really beautiful sections. I think it would be a nice fall ride, with all the fall colors. It would also be just a nice trail to walk, it's basically flat.

 We had another experience with the power of wind a few weeks ago on Lake Padden. We went kayaking (our first fishing trip of the year). I got none, my husband caught a nice trout for our dinner.

 Anyway, when we started it was a bit breezy, I told my husband that I wasn't feeling too comfortable and that if it got worse I was heading in. We made it across the lake, played around in the protected side of the lake for a couple of hours. I noticed that it would be getting dark in awhile and suggested we head back. Little did I know that our little protected area, also kept us out of touch with just how much the wind had picked up. I knew it was still blowing, but didn't realize that it had picked up. As I headed out to cross the lake the chop on the lake was considerable and I could really feel the wind pushing me from behind. The rolling water came as high as my kayak, as I rolled up and down with the water I panicked abit and thought yikes, I'm alone in this kayak it's up to me to get me safely across to the take out spot. Then I was mostly fine just concentrating on keeping my kayak to the correct angle of the waves. As much as I tried to keep an angle of crossing the lake the wind was pushing me to the end of the lake. I wasn't afraid of capsizing, I can swim. I just didn't think it would be very fun in the rough water. My second panic was when I realized I would run out of lake and I would need to cross the lake at the same angle as the waves. The end of the lake shore doesn't have a nice beach for take out, I would have just kept banging into the bank with the waves until I figured out how to get out of my kayak. My panic was only momentary, it went away when I began concentrating on my strategy for each wave as it came and paddling as hard as I could to get to the launch quickly. I amazed myself and got to the take out spot. My husband pulled up right after me. He'd been watching my trip as he crossed and said I did a good job. This was the roughest water/wind event I'd been in with my kayak. I don't know if I'd want to do it again, but it's nice to know I can. So I guess when it comes to wind and water, I prefer to watch it and not to be in it.

Here's a couple of weather related 😉 Irish Blessings.

May the road rise up to meet you.

may the wind always be at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

and rains fall soft upon your field.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

Wishing you always..

Walls for the wind,

A roof for the rain

And tea beside the fire.

Laughter to cheer you,

Those you love near you,

And all that your heart may desire.