Saturday, March 11, 2017
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Sharpe park, Heart & Erie lakes hike(s)
2 hikes in one day.
Late in February my husband and I drove to Whidbey Island to celebrate my 63rd birthday. We spent a couple of days there exploring the back roads around the Island. On our way there we stopped at a park that we'd never noticed before - Sharpe park. We checked out the signboard and noticed that the park had trails, we made a mental note to stop there another time and check them out. Then a few days later as I was reading some of the blogs that I follow, I saw that the Senior Trailblazers had hiked there that very same week. You can read Djan's account of their day there HERE, it confirmed to us that it would be a nice place to hike.
Well, today was the day.
We grabbed one of the maps available at the kiosk and began our new adventure.
We decided to walk the perimeter trails and skip the inner trails. We hiked a ways and remembered we had left our binoculars in the car, oops. A short hike to the car and back. We came by a large marsh and it was wonderful to hear the birds singing. A sign of Spring?
I videoed the marsh area, so you could listen to their songs.
The trail wound through some magnificent Madrona trees.
We hiked out to Sares bluff first. What a view!
Enjoy this panorama video view from the bluff.
My happy place.
We then kept going on the perimeter trail. This was my favorite view of the day.
The photo below is a panorama, tap or click on it to see it larger.
When we were at the highest viewpoint we happened to run into three Senior Trailblazers (Ginny, Heidi and Marijke) eating their lunches. Small world! After a nice visit with them we headed on down the trail as we still had another destination in mind for the day.
Garmin stats:
total miles hiked - 4 miles
total ascent - 1040 feet
total descent - 1079 feet
Our next hike was to be from Heart lake to Erie lake. and back. I've hiked around Heart lake before, but not with the added Erie lake route. We had pretty good weather while we were at Sharpe park, but the day got pretty wet as we were doing this second hike.
We stopped for lunch under the large Fir and Cedar trees for a shelter from the rain. The tree needles all had large drops of water clinging to the ends of them.
Back on the trail after lunch.
More Madrona's at this viewpoint before we headed down to Erie lake. We hiked a loop back to the trail we had hiked down from, so kind of a lollipop.
We didn't take the same lakeside trail that we had started on, instead we headed up the hill again and hiked into the parking lot from another trail. What a great day of adventuring on new trails!
We hiked through so many beautiful and different types of forests today.
I'm very happy that I live in the "Evergreen" state. 💚
Garmin stats:
total miles hiked - 7 miles
total ascent - 1004 feet
total descent - 997 feet
Both hikes combined totals:
total miles hiked - 11 miles
total ascent - 2044 feet
total descent - 2056 feet
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