Thursday, February 6, 2020

Bp area hike

Since my hiking days with the Senior Trailblazers, I've always felt like Thursday was my hiking day. Even though its been a few years since I've hiked with them, it's still very ingrained into my brain. 
We've had a lot of rain in our area recently and today was no different, but as I learned from the Trailblazers - "rain or shine" Thursday always has a hike waiting for us.
We live near the Nooksack river, but thankfully out of the flood plain. We drove out to a bridge a few miles from our house to get a look at the high water on the First of February. This is what we saw - the Nooksack River running over it's banks. We had quite a few roads in our county closed due to the flooding. Thankfully the rain stopped for awhile. The blue skies were a welcome sight.

There was no blue in the sky today. It was fairly dark and it rained on us the whole time we were out. We put on our rain gear and enjoyed our time together anyway.
We started at the Bp public access area, and walked on the old road. When we used to have dogs this was a wonderful area to go, since it's gated at both ends of the property, there are no cars to watch out for.  I'm thankful that Bp allows free access to wander through the fields and walk the road. 



I followed my husband or was it Quasimodo aka The hunchback of Notre-Dame😉? He wore his backpacking rain poncho over his pack and this combination gave him a noticeable humpback.

Either the amount of rain or it's result "overly saturated" soil, led the earthworms out into the road but it was only to their deaths. There were many pale dead earthworms on the road. These worms and the occasional dogs walking the road (or running through the fields) with their owners, was our only wildlife sightings of our day.

My husband took a photo of me in all of my fine rainy day attire. Across the fields behind my left shoulder was our destination, the Point Whitehorn Marine Reserve trailhead. The Point Whitehorn trail is a short trail that leads to the beach, a perfect place for our lunch before returning the way we came.

First we had to get there by way of a small paved trail and a road walk.



Walking through the wind storm carnage along the trail.


and the soggy trail.


When we got to the last section of the trail that leads down to the beach we found that it had been closed. The stairs leading to the beach had been damaged. Wouldn't it have been nice if this info. was at the trail head? Hmmmm...... just one of my hiking pet peeves.

So we turned around and looked for a "Not" so wet place to eat.

Everywhere we looked it was pretty wet, even under the trees where there is usually a dry spot under a large fir or Cedar tree. Not today, but my trusty husband came prepared. He set up a tarp and before I knew it we had a nice covered area to enjoy our lunch.


Rainy day picnic Pacific Northwest Style❤

Our view!

After packing up we walked out to the road and began our journey back.
Looking across the fields towards the Bp property where we were headed.

It was a good day of hiking the roads and trails in and around the Bp area. It was not a mountain or Wilderness trail hike, but a hike nonetheless. I wore my day pack & hiking boots and that always makes it a hike to me!

Garmin stats:
Total miles hiked - 7.7 miles
Total ascent - 272 feet

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