We have been skiing every weekend since the begining of the year, but unseasonable warm spell this last week make the prospect of skiing more like ice skating. Instead, we picked a new campground that we had been meaning to go to and headed out for a weekend of hiking and camping. Sara, who constantly talks about camping when it’s been more than a month since we have gone, was thrilled.
We left on Saturday around noon and ended up making it to Camano Island State Park in the late afternoon - just in time to pick out a campsite (we did not have a reservation, but they are not in particularly high demand right now) and set off on a short hike down to the beach.
The hike was fun, although busy - it seemed like this must have been a favorite area for residents to take a walk with their dogs so Oakley got to meet quite a few little pups on the walk. We also did our standard Sara beach hike etiquette - picking up basically every shell, stick, funny shaped rock, etc and declaring them treasures before insisting that we take them back to the campsite. I allowed her to bring a few sticks/logs back that we could use to start the fire (which became her sole purpose in life). We made it back to camp just as the sun was setting.
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Our campsite was nice and had a pretty view, but it’s winter on a PNW island so everything was wet and muddy. Sara had her fire sticks (see below) and thankfully we purchased a few bundles of wood as well.
We cooked dinner and watched a movie before heading off to bed.
The next day we had plans to explore a recommended hiking area on the island called the Inverson preserve. It was a short drive and, after a quick breakfast at the general store, we headed off to hike. We were reminded to clean up after Oakley with a cute sign.
The hike went through a wetland and what appeared to be a man-made erosion control berm. We saw lots of birds and small animals, but nothing big.
There was a small diversion off of the trail to the hobbit trail, which true to it’s name was littered with staged hobbits. Some of them looked new, but most looked like they had been there a while. Often, they were setup like a little scene conversing around the market or hanging out near a cottage. We both really enjoyed this - clearly this was someone’s passion project (or several people).
We got back to the car around noon after about a mile and a half hike.
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We did one more hike on the way back to Seattle, but it was very muddy and not a lot of fun. We stopped for lunch at a fun place in Stanwood and got back into Seattle in the late afternoon. Not our most adventurous trip, but we made good use of the otherwise poor ski weekend.