It was stormy and dark when we left our home this morning. We brought our rain gear and were ready for what the day had to give us. We drove through the usual rain near the Alger exit on the freeway as we headed south, and then as usual the closer we got to Whidbey Island the nicer the day got. We had no rain the whole time we were hiking, just a nice brisk breeze.
We parked near the Prairie overlook, actually just around the corner from there is the main parking area for the trail. The map below is a cropping I made of this full MAP.
We walked past the old Ebey house and blockhouse that are part of the National Historic Preserve. The blockhouse that we passed by had some interesting shims added where logs were put in to fill the spaces. You can read about the Jacob and Sarah Ebey house HERE (there are also some great historic photos included in the article).
Looking back at the full size of the blockhouse.
We made our way along the Ebey prairie trail, that connects with the Bluff trail.
Just where the two trails connect, there is a wonderful Prickly Pear cactus growing. We always like to check it out to see how it's doing. If you zoom in on the photo below you'll notice the cactus in the middle right, just at the edge of the bushes. The photo is looking down at the beach below from the bluff.
We hiked along the bluff until we came to our usual lunch spot. We sat and enjoyed the view.
My husband wanted to know what the tide would be before we went down to the beach so I checked it out on my iPhone at this website. The highest tide of the day had already happened, but it was coming in just a bit more again. The blue vertical line on the screenshot below was the time we were looking at the chart, so as you can see we had a little time before the tide was at it's next high mark.
Making our way down to the beach from the bluff.
As you can see the tide was just coming up to the driftwood as the surf came in.
We decided to do the inner trail along Perego's lake.
After rounding the point the inner trail goes away and the rest of the walk has to be done on the beach. The shore was wider here so the tide wasn't as much of an issue for the rest of the beach distance.
We finished our hike by walking up the stairs that lead to the Bluff/Prairie trail junction (or where the cactus lives).
Before heading back we did the Pratt loop. What a nice day it turned out to be.
A wonder of a wander once again at Ebey landing.
Relive video of our route:
Garmin stats:
total miles hiked - 5.69
total ascent - 525 feet
total descent - 551 feet
