Ebey's Landing

I'm struggling currently with hikes for us to do. A lot of the good hikes are still snowbound to both vehicles and people (at least, those who lack the necessary equipment), so choosing a hike takes a decent amount of effort. The one I picked for today was gorgeous. It was out on Whidbey Island, which is a short ferry ride from Mukilteo. We headed up to Coupeville to hike along the praire and ocean bluffs at Ebey's Landing.

June 12 2011 Woodland Park Zoo

It might not have been a hike in the true sense of the word, but we did do a lot of walking, and there were some hills, lots of wildlife and flowing water. I even fed an Elephant named Bamboo some bamboo using a bamboo stick!

Poo Poo Point Bust

So we attempted to head to a trail head that would take us up Tiger Mountain to Poo Poo Point, which is a nice expanse of green lawn at the top of a mountain with good views.

Well, Friday and Saturday were clearer than I'd ever seen the area. You could see Rainier in perfect clarity and all of the mountains to the east, west and north. Sunday was supposed to be similar to those days.

Well, we started out and there were already clouds to the south. We could hardly make out Rainier. When we finally arrived in Issaquah to find the trailhead, we were under those clouds, so the sunshine was gone (not enough to stop a hike... but still discouraging). Finally, the directions to the hike were muddled on top of there being construction of a new high school right around the trailhead. There was additionally minimal parking available without a longer walk.

Still, we persisted through, made a false start that ended up being okay but we didn't know it, then drove around, found the described trailhead, and parked further away and walked in and started the hike. It was cool in the forest, and pleasant but there was no signage regarding where the actual trail was that took off up the mountain.

We encountered a group of people who had done a loop trail and they informed us that Tiger Mountain was closed to all users for trail maintenance. And that's where we called it quits. We did a short hike up a portion of the trail, before the closed section, then turned around and worked our way around the construction fencing back to the car and drove home.

We ended up eating lunch out by the lake by our apartment, then biking over to a friend's house. The bike ride was nice, about 7 miles round trip, which is about what our hike would have been, and complete with hills. I'll have pictures up of the few wildflowers I saw today but otherwise this was a bust.