Goose Rock Trailblazer hike

A new hike for me, I have never hiked to Goose Rock on Whidbey Island. What a wonderful place! 16 of us thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in the sunshine today. Good times with good company & too many pictures to post them all, but here are some of my favorites of the day.

We started at Deception Pass State Park.

First view of the bridge from the trail.

A very large Sitka Spruce -

A look back - wow!

Such beautiful large trees.

The perfect place for lunch, if you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see the Olympic coastal range in the distance.

Indian Paintbrush

Cornet Bay

Walking along the beach and back to the cars.

endomondo stats:
5.2 total miles hiked
-2 Min. altitude
494 Max. altitude
680 Total ascent
702 Total descent

Rock trail from Gates overlook

Sunday we did a fun family hike to Fragrance lake and then drove up to the Cyrus Gates overlook. I've been itching to hike the new Rock trail, so my husband said sure let's go for it and see what it's like.

I tracked our walk with my endomondo app, because I wanted to know how far it was from the parking lot on top to the south Lost lake trail junction below. From sign to sign and back it was just over 2 miles. We'd heard that there had been about 100 steps put in when they built this new trail. My husband decided to count them as we hiked. He counted wood and hand placed rock steps. The actual number according to my most excellent step counter was 189 steps - one way.

I'd heard it was pretty difficult to go up and down, but I was pleasantly surprised that it really wasn't that bad. I really enjoyed it. Here are some of the views along the trail.

This is wonderful trail (WTA project) to a beautiful place, put it on your hiking list.