I plugged the coords to Deception State Park into the Nuvi and we were on our way. Like I had mentioned before, we were here July 2013 grabbing all the state park caches and decided to bypass this one because the stamp was missing. I figured we might come back this way someday and pick it up when the cache and stamp were available. I read the logs before our trip and the stamp was intact. We've never been to this part of Deception Pass. Rosario Beach was the other part to the park. This section contained some beach front, information about the Indians who used to live in this area and lots of walking trails.
We spent some time picking up flat rocks to bring home with us for some future art projects. Then we walked the quarter of a mile to WaStatePks100: Rosario Beach-Deception Pass (GC46PJQ). We encountered a few groups of people enjoying the day. We were asked about the trees along the pathway. I told the family that those were Madrona Trees and they like to grow in these type of climates. They thanked us for the information and we parted ways. We reached the cache site and it was obvious on where it was. There was a great view of Bowman Bay from this location. We took it all in.
We started our walk back to the van. The one great thing I continue to say about this series is that every state park has bathrooms. Before we left grandma wanted to get a few more flat rocks from the beach. Mom wasn't feeling all that great so we left her to see if it would go away after resting. We came back and she still wasn't feeling great. We got back onto the highway and went over the bridge. We stopped in the viewpoint parking lot and grandma and I walked down the hill so she could see the view of the bridge. Mom stayed behind again waiting to feel better. We walked the quarter of a mile down the hill and came across some Eastern European visitors swimming in the bay. Yes, swimming. It was too cold to swim. They were crazy!
We walked back up hoping mom was feeling better. When we got to the staircase she intercepted us telling us she felt better. We walked back down the stairs and admired the bridge from this spot.
We got back in the van and headed to our next destination, Oak Harbor.
The last time we were here was very brief. I think it was mostly because we really didn't know where we were going or what we were doing. This time we knew exactly where we were going.
We drove into the older part of town and just drove around looking. We found where the military base was, saw some really weird art and found a windmill structure mom wanted to go see. We found out it was in a park called Windjammer. We found a place to park and figured out how to walk to it because certain areas were blocked off with fences due to construction. There were kids swimming in the "swim at your own risk" area. It was just too cold to swim.
We made it over to the windmill and admired it. Of course I checked to see if there was a geocache nearby. The closest one was on the edge of the park kind of where we parked the van. It hadn't been found for a while so I briefly looked and abandoned the search.
We were getting hungry and we thought a Subway sandwich sounded fitting. I checked my food app for the closest Subway and found one not too far from where we were at the Walmart. We used the restroom and ordered our sandwiches. We had chips and drinks in the van. Those sandwiches totally hit the spot. I felt like I inhaled it. We were now on our way to Coupeville.
Coupeville is the second oldest town in Washington State and was founded in 1852 by Captain Thomas Coupe. It is the county seat of Island County and encompasses several State Parks, farmlands and has 91 buildings and structures on the National Registry of Historical Places. We knew this place was going to be fun and interesting. We stopped to grab the earthcache just off of Hwy 20. The Coupeville Erratic (GC1C6CY) was a giant rock that was really out of place. It sat near a mobile home park, a parking lot and a business. They really didn't want you to walk past the fence due to the no trespassing sign. We took our picture from the parking lot unlike some of the geocachers, who did it from the lawn. We answered the questions and took our picture. I was so glad I brought my selfie stick.
We spent a good hour out on the wharf and then decided to move on to something else. We stopped by the lavender store and I bought some lavender ice cream to try. I sat out on the porch swing and ate it.
I was apprehensive at first but it was actually really good. It was mixed with vanilla and had a crunchy chocolate coating on the outside. We walked back to the van and continued on our trip down towards the ferry. Our next stop was South Whidbey Island State Park.
I made sure the stamps were in these caches before we left from the hotel this morning. I was not going to go all the way to the cache and find out the stamp was gone. We followed the Nuvi to the park and there weren't that many people in this park today so we had no trouble finding a parking spot. We saw that one of the trails was closed due to weather damage so we followed the second set of instructions to the correct path. We found the hobbit trail and it led us down the hill to a stump/nurse log/tree that actually looked like a hobbit house. WaStatePks100: South Whidbey (GC4AVQA) was an easy find in a pretty cool location.
We moved on again and kinda just drove around. We saw the sign for a town called Langley and decided to go scope it out because none of us had been there before and why not? It was smaller than Rainier and they host the county fair every third week of August. It had a lot of old buildings just as Coupeville did and their town was along the shoreline overlooking the Saratoga Passage. We stopped for a cache, Rock N' Music (GC5WZEW) at the local coffee and tattoo parlor. It took me a while to pinpoint which flower bed it was in because the GPS bounced all over the place and there were two muggles kind of watching me. I eventually found it. It was a fake rock.
Last time we were on Whidbey Island we were kind of in a hurry and I really wanted to get the webcam in Clinton. We ran out of time, it was getting dark and we had to bypass it for another time. This time we had enough daylight, we weren't in a hurry and we didn't have to rush. We parked the van and positioned ourselves at the right camera. We got our still for the Clinton Ferry Terminal Webcam (GCN1PX), which is my 11th webcam since July 30, 2010. I saved the picture to my phone and we got back in the van and got in line for the ferry.
We had to wait a little bit for the ferry this time. It wasn't too bad. We paid our $8.50 and got in lane 5. We had enough time to park, turn the van off and go inside to use the restroom before our ferry came. For some reason I get really excited on ferries and airplanes. They are just modes of transportation I don't get to use very often and when I do it's really exciting! Once we got on and it was deemed safe by the ferry captain, we turned off the van and headed up to the observation deck. There, we enjoyed the ride to the Mukilteo Ferry Terminal on the main land.
Once we docked, we got off and mom wanted to see the light house for a bit. We got gas shortly after up on the Mukilteo Speedway and merged onto I-5. Mom had the idea of stopping at Dick's for dinner because grandma had never been and it's been a while since mom or I have had it. I chose the one off of 45th near Doug's old neighborhood. I was last here back in summer 2014 while I was at the geocaching block party. We got out and ordered our food. Grandma was in awe of how cheap this place was.
We ate our food outside of the van and I talked to Ben until it was time to get back on the freeway towards home. We got home around 9ish. That was a very busy trip but we got to see and do a lot.
Next Adventure: Car Maintenance, Liberty, Entiat, Wenatchee and Chelan
1 comment:
WOW...looks like quite an adventure!!
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