Heart/Erie Lake trails hike

We headed towards the possibility of sun today, back to Fidalgo Island. We've had a weather streak here in Whatcom county: 22 days straight of rain. Yikes. 

Today was just what I needed to lift my spirits, sun peeking through the trees and a day playing with water. I had fun and felt like a kid having a great day of play. Every time we found a puddle across the trail, we used our hiking sticks, rocks, sticks or our boots to create an outward flow to get the water off of the trail. I spent alot of time working on my outflow channels,  we were quite the excavating team. It was somehow satisfying to watch the puddles drain off the trail.

When we left home and drove through Bellingham it was raining, but the closer we got to Heart lake, the nicer it got. There was even a bit of blue in the sky when we began our hike.

The lake level was high, as you can see in the photo below.

I like to look at trees that are thriving even after their mother tree/stump has deteriorated back into the earth. This one had quite the hollow area below it, but thriving it was!

Ahhh.... sunlight ❤

I loved seeing the sun shine through the trees again.

Part of the trail to Erie lake parallels the road and we could see this waterfall just on the other side of the road.

We stopped at a clearing with a tiny view of Erie lake, and a great view of Mt. Erie.

The rocks in the photo below have Glacial scratching along them.

Mt. Erie

Madrona's ❤

We hiked on to another "view" area. There isn't a view, but it is a nice top of a hill. There was a fairly strong north wind blowing on the top, so we didn't hang around long.

The trails are well marked with a plethora of signs.

The trail I'm standing at is NOT a trail we took. I think we took every other trail in the vicinity today though.

We didn't start hiking till around 11:30, our late start brought us back to our car just on time for a bit of a sunset.

Relive video of our route.

You'll see in the video that Heart lake is actually heart shaped!

https://youtu.be/BO3vAvw3rDg

Garmin stats:

total miles hiked - 10 miles

total ascent - 1348 feet

Mon Oeuvre ~ On Ringo Lake Mystery Quilt progress 11

I made the Quilt Sandwich! 

After squaring up the flimsy, I bought the backing fabric, washed it, cut it and sewed it together. I ironed it with starch before I laid it down on a sheet on the floor for the quilt sandwich assembly. I found a nice fabric for the backing, I really like how it looks, sorry the good side is laying on the ironing board. No peeking!

I use 505 adhesive spray to put the layers together, and a three sided ruler to smooth it all out with the adhesive spray. It all works really well for me. It's probably not what a "real" quilter would approve of, but I just try my best with what I have. After making sure I had it all smoothed out I trimmed the batting to about 2” from the quilt edge.

This week I'm doing the machine quilting. I don't do anything fancy, just stitch in the ditch and some 1/4" outline quilting. The picture below show my setup for the machine quilting. It takes a bit of wrestling with the fabric but I make it work. 😎