September 20, 2013 Deception State Park, Washington

We left Bellingham and headed for the islands in the Puget sound.

This is two bridges built in the 1930’s over Canoe and Deception pass. They are passages between islands. It was called Deception because Capt. Vancouver first thought these islands were part of the mainland because this passage was so small that he didn’t see it.  Canoe is even narrower than Deception.  We got to Whidbey Island and went to Deception Pass state park.

We got this lovely campsite which even has hookups.  The available sites were all pretty short, we fit in by inches with the bus and the car in front. We took what I thought looked like a 3 mile hike around the park on the map. We started at the campground and walked on this trail through the cedars back to the bridge and walked across it and back.

Here is a view looking at more islands and I think toward the mainland. Very faintly on the horizon you can see Mt Baker were we were just hiking by a couple days ago. We then took the North Beach trail along this beach. A view of more of the islands the other direction.  There are 172 islands ranging in size from mere rocky islets to 57 square mile Orcas Island.

John walking on the North Beach. A view back behind us to the bridges and the beach.  We hiked through the rest of the campgrounds and by Cranberry Lake a fresh water inland lake. The hike ended up being more like 5 miles and we were pretty tired.

I worked more on the basket.  It is 8 inches tall and about 7 wide at this point.  The plan so far is that it will be a taller vase shaped basket with a footer attached. John BBQed dinner. It started to rain just as we sat down to eat, good thing John hung a new bigger tarp over the table. Some of the fauna, a huge 5 inch slug, a millipede, and a bunny. We have seen black tailed deer here too. Later in the evening when it was dark I was getting into the bus after dinner, took my shoes off, stepped onto our mat and stepped on a huge slug barefoot. Really gross. I figured I was safe on our mat, but no such luck.