Skagit Valley Tulip bike ride

Sunday is our (my husband and my) long activity day, we decided to check out the Tulips in Skagit County. The Skagit Tulip Festival is April 1 - 30, we wanted to see how far along the Tulips were in bloom. We began our trek from the north end of The Padilla Bay Shore trail.

It was overcast most of the day with a little wind and drizzle after lunch, but pretty nice for biking.

Some of the Daffodil fields are getting past their prime, but there were enough that were in full bloom that it was pretty spectacular. 

Click on the panorama photo below to expand it.

We rode past RoozenGaarde's and Tulip Town, but didn't go into their display gardens on this trip.

There was a small flock of Trumpeter Swans just beyond this red Tulip field. They don't show up in the two photos below unless you really enlarge the pictures.

We rode to LaConner for lunch, it was nice to sit on a bench along the channel while we ate.

I managed to get a picture of my husband below the banner on the lightpole ;-) hee hee.

If we would have paid to park near the field of Tulips in the photo below, I could have gotten a better picture of the many colors of this large field. Since we were on our bikes we didn't want to pay to park. The picture was taken from the shoulder of the road, it really doesn't do it justice. It was a very large and colorful field. Not all of the Tulip fields were in bloom yesterday, so maybe another trip down for us.

As we were heading back, wave after wave of Snow Geese flew overhead. With the cloudy sky it may be hard to see them in the photo below, it you click to enlarge it that my help you find them in the clouds. 

I got one more picture of a field of sunshine, before we headed to our car.

We went a total of 30 miles on our bikes, a most EXCELLENT way to see the fields of Skagit County.

Who needs the sun when you can see it shining fully from a large field of Daffodils :-)

Picture of the week ~ First Trillium sighting of the year March 2015

One Hundred Acre Woods Trailblazer hike

Wow, 20 hikers today for our Trailblazer hike into the One Hundred Acre Woods. 

It was a bit grey looking for our start today at Marine Park.

We connected with the Interurban Green way trail system and walked towards Fairhaven Park.

The trail was in pretty good condition, only a few muddy places. I had hiked this area once before in 2012 with the Trailblazers (click here to read that post) and it was quite wet & muddy that day.

As you look at the photo below, which trail would you take - the one to the left or the one to the right?

If you chose the left, you chose wisely. 

That's just what we did :-)

There were a lot of Holly trees amongst the Cedar and Douglas fir in the forest.

The best part of the day......we spotted our first Trillium of the year.

Our fearless leader "Pat", didn't want us to be caught in a downpour so he led us out of the forest and back on to the Interurban trail to make our escape while it was still fairly pleasant out.

We ate our lunch in a civilized manner, at real Picnic tables. Hurray!

There were several tables to choose from, so we broke up into groups and enjoyed our lunches before heading back to our cars. 

It was a light drizzle at this point, just enough for us to need our coats and hats.

Excellent decision, fearless leader :-)

Endomondo stats:

Total miles hiked - 5.65 miles

Minimum Altitude - 3 feet

Maximum Altitude - 261 feet

Total Ascent - 223 feet

Total Descent - 291 feet

Spartan Race training

A couple of weeks ago I posted that I had signed up for my first Spartan Race. I already have a consistent exercise schedule going on, I hike with the Senior Trailblazers every Thursday and on the other days I run & do some exercises at home. Even though I'm a consistently active person I still felt like I was going to be sick when I clicked on the finish the transaction and paid my entry. I had watched my daughter and son in law compete in the Pac West Spartan Sprint Race, in Washougal, Wa. last August so I have a fair idea of what's in store for me. 

 I'll be doing the Montana Sprint. 

There are 3 levels of Spartan racing: 

Sprint 

Super 

Beast

Each level has it's own distance & number of obstacles to be completed. A "Trifecta" is when a Sprint, Super & Sprint are all completed in one calendar year.

 If you click on the photo below to expand it you will see that some of the obstacles are classified, some of the details are left out :-) to be discovered as they were on the course. All Spartan Races are this way, they leave some parts a mystery. The course below was for the Pac West Spartan race in Washougal, Wa. 

To up my training for the Montana Sprint I follow the Spartan Workout of the day or WOD. Here is a screenshot of what I did today. I'm following the workouts one day delayed so that it will work out with my existing hiking/running days.

I'm really lacking in upper body strength, but I'm really enjoying the workouts. In a Spartan Race each non completed or skipped obstacle has a 30 BURPEE (or squat thrust) penalty. So I'm trying to do burpees "often" throughout the day as well. Every day is a new adventure in training for me, who knew when I was watching that race last August that I would be signed up for one the following May!
Aroo.....

Picture(s) of the week ~ Mt. Baker current conditions

March 13, 2015,

& Ski to Sea is the end of May?!?!?

Panorama - click to enlarge

North Butte Trailblazer hike

13 Trailblazers headed to the Blanchard Mountain parking lot for our scheduled North Butte hike. It was raining last night when I packed my hiking pack, so I had put in my rain poncho. When I awoke this morning and saw blue sky I decided to be optimistic and took my rain poncho out! It turned out to be the right decision, we had wonderful weather for today's hike.

We took the Lily and Lizard lakes trail.

We followed Max's shortcut towards Lily lake.

I took the two photos below to show the differences in the forest as we walked through it. The first photo is full of ferns and moss was on many of the trees around us. The second photo has little vegetation other than the large trees.

We walked past Lily lake on our way up to North Butte.

Thanks for taking my picture Joe!

Finally lunch!

After lunch I walked over to check out the view & wow I'm glad I did - 

Looking to the left

Looking to the right

As we walked back down the trail to the parking lot, I spied this serene spot in the forest. 

It was so peaceful, as if saying "Happy Trails to you".

Endomondo stats:

Total miles hiked - 9.45 miles

Minimum altitude - 863 feet

Maximum altitude - 2243 feet

Total ascent - 1667 feet

Total descent - 1840

Chuckanut Ridge, Rock Trail, Raptor Ridge

My husband and I have started hiking together on the weekends. Yesterday's hike he planned for us was to be long, it was!

Again he got out his trusty "Happy Trails" map and figured out a route for us.

We began at the North Chuckanut Trail head as we did last Sunday. For this hike however we were headed towards the Chuckanut Ridge Trail.

It was about 35 degrees when we began our hike but we quickly got warm as we hiked "up" the trail. When we got to the viewpoint we stopped and took off our gloves, hats, and outer layer.

We continued walking "up" the spine of Chuckanut ridge towards Gates Overlook.

Finally our lunch spot in view. 

The view from the Gates Overlook never gets old. The photo below shows the view looking towards Bellingham Bay.

After lunch and a nice rest it was on to the Rock Tail. The WTA trail crew made a really nice series of steps down this trail. I've posted about it before, you can read that blog post here.

Here a a few pics from this section of the hike.

We then connected with the Lost Lake trail, you can just see the lake through the trees in the photo below.

We hiked for quite a ways on the Lost Lake trail before turning onto the Raptor Ridge trail.

I really enjoyed the long sweeping switchbacks as we made our way up, with the clear weather day we got in a nice view.

After a brief stop we then headed down to the Hemlock trail junction. I found and interesting post about this section of the trail. The author is describing the trail from the opposite direction we hiked it, so if you read this post from the Northwest Geological field trips site, just reverse the info. for what we did. Neither one of us had been on this particular section of the trail before and we were interested in taking it.

The trail then intersects with the Lost Lake trail, which took us back to our starting point - The North Chuckanut Trail head.

I like the word "Plethora", 

that is exactly how many trails are in the Chuckanut Mtn. trail system  ;-)

Endomondo stats:
Total miles hiked - 14 miles
Minimum altitude - 70 feet
Maximum altitude - 1888 feet
Total ascent - 2634 feet
Total descent - 2708 feet

Picture of the week ~ Spartan Race!

Yikes, I signed up for a Spartan Race.