Day 263 – North Cascades Loop (Part 2)

Day 263 – North Cascades Loop (Part 2), September 5, 2011

Well, I felt like I had an extremely busy day to write
about, but now that I have skimmed through the pictures I didn’t go many
places. It must have been the holiday
traffic and the wait for the ferry that took up a few hours of my afternoon.

This morning I took about a 4.5 mile hike in Wallace Falls
State Park. It was cool out and VANilla
had a shady parking spot, so Petey got to wait for me. I normally take him on dog friendly trails,
but I’ve been subject to dragging him midway through the second mile. Thank goodness I left him to rest, the trail
had quite a bit of elevation change. It
wound through moss covered trees and nearby a creek before reaching a multi-teired
waterfall. The 265 foot falls included a
lower, middle, and upper section.
I enjoyed the views at the lower and middle falls where the upper falls
was still in view. I could have hiked
just over another mile to the top of the upper falls, but I tend to like the
view of the falls from below, so I turned around at the middle falls to save
Petey from his alone time in VANilla.

Upon leaving the park, I noticed the highway was busy with
traffic headed west to Seattle, so I tried killing some time while eating lunch
at Zeke’s again. This was probably a
poor choice as in addition to the traffic there was a motorcycle accident. The motorcycle was upright and the riders
seemed fine sitting curbside, but a team of medics were on the scene, so I don’t
know the final outcome. Hopefully all
are well. We finally made it to the
Mukilteo-Clinton 3:30 ferry which transported us across Puget Sound to Whidbey
Island. After a driving tour through the
quaint, bayside town of Langley, we found a campsite at Fort Ebey State Park
and promptly took advantage of the showers.

Clean and fresh, I took a drive to Coupeville where I found
a pub that was established over 100 years ago.
Mussels, beer, and CNN! Ok, so I
was hoping it would be ESPN for a little football, I did hear of the terrible,
uncontained fire near Austin. Wow,
sounds like they are raging everywhere in the state. A fellow mate at the bar finally requested
ESPN, so I caught a few minutes of college ball before I steered VANilla back
to Fort Ebey State Park just in time for the sunset. ETB