Today we headed south to Fidalgo Island again.
The Tursi trail is one of my favorites. The trailhead is near the Mt. Erie store at the base of Mt. Erie. We made sure we parked right at the "designated" Tursi trail parking area sign. After walking a short while on the road to the trailhead we began our hike "up" the trail.
The first section of the trail is a narrow corridor in a dense forest and up a few stone steps, it opens up to some Madrona trees dotting the forest and a peek at Mt. Erie.
As we neared the top we came to a bench. I took a close up of the plaque on the bench.
There is a cave and an old cabin near the top. I stood at the cave entrance for scale. As you can see it has a fairly large opening. The photo on the right shows the cave without me in front of it. Unfortunately the cabin is beginning to fall apart.
I do some daily exercises and whenever we come to fallen trees that require me to crawl under them, I'm always glad I'm still working on my Bear Army crawls. The photo below is my under log maneuvering.
Yay! I crawled under with my pack still on.
I spend quite a bit of our time on hikes taking pictures, my husband is usually pretty patient with all of my pauses. After I stopped to get a close up of some mushrooms, I noticed him in his "patient" pose😄
His "patient" pose.
We stopped at the top to enjoy the views of the Rock cliff on the other side of Naked Man valley and also Pass Lake far in the distance.
Then it was on to the Big Cedar trail. There was some carnage on the trail from a fallen tree but this time we could just walk through it, no climbing involved.
Before we made our way up the last section of the Big Cedar tree my husband did some water flow/trail repair.
We turned right at the East Pass lake trail to follow an old dirt/gravel road that led to the paved Rosario rd. We walked about 1/2 mile on the road until we got to the turn off to the Rosario Beach State park. I filled my garbage bag on this road walk section. I use the second bag as a glove. The only trash I picked up today was along the road. There was so much garbage in the ditches along the road, it made me very sad. I picked up only what was on the shoulder. I would have had to bring a wagon to clean up the ditches in that 1/2 mile section. Oh well, at least I made a small difference today.
Lunch was at a shelter at the State park.
We enjoyed hot soup with our lunch!
The walk to Bowman bay is always so scenic.
Three bunnies near a picnic site.
Bowman Bay❤
The tide must have been high during the last wind storm, the logs and seaweed were strewn all across the trail.
Instead of hiking on to Lottie loop or Lighthouse point, we turned left and made our way to Pass lake.
The kiosk there has information about John Tursi.
Time to make our way back up the Tursi trail. The view towards pass lake from the top had a bit more blue sky in it this time around.
Finishing up with the last road walk to where we'd parked the car with a nice view of Mt. Erie before us. What a way to end our hike.
Relive video of our route:
Garmin stats:
total miles hiked - 8.18
total ascent - 1788 feet
total descent - 1795 feet
