Saturday, April 9, 2011
This morning Joe and I headed to Larrabee State Park, off of Chuckanut Drive, which has great overlooks of Samish Bay and the San Juan Islands. We drove up Hiline Road and gravel Cleator Road, up part of the Chuckanut Mountain to the trailhead for the Fragrance Lake Trail. We decided to do a shorter hike today to ease into our new life where we hike a lot more. There were many ferns growing in this part of the park where not much sunlight reaches the forest floor. There is a .7 mile loop around Fragrance Lake. It’s amazing that trees and ferns can grow in the side of rock ledges. We let Chance off her leash so she could easily navigate on her own through the muddy parts of the trail. It’s a good thing she doesn’t like to play in the mud like most dogs. She did find the water to be very cold though. There was a large tree trunk covered in green moss. I think Chance ended up hiking 3 times as much as us, running ahead, running back to us and sprinting everywhere on the trail to her heart’s content.
We plan to come back and hike the Interurban Trail which departs from Fairhaven in Bellingham and extends 6 miles following closely along Chuckanut Drive in Larrabee State Park. It was once a trolley line that serviced Mount Vernon and Bellingham in the early twentieth century. We continued to drive further down Chuckanut Drive. The overlooks are amazing.
We stopped for lunch at the Oyster Bay on Chuckanut Drive, a restaurant that is a premier dining destination spot. The spectacular views of the San Juan Islands and Anacortes on Fidalgo Island are a perfect backdrop for the dining of the candlelit tables. For an appetizer we had Samish Bay baked oysters with spinach, tomatoes, bacon, dry sherry and chives. There are prime shellfish beds on Samish Bay. I had crab cakes made with Dungeness & Jonah crab and served with black plum chutney. My favorite part was the sweet potato fries with sea salt. I believe Joe had a fresh northwest salmon sandwich with blackberry balsamic brown butter. It was pricey for the food, but the view made it worth it.
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