Deception Pass

Today did not go as planned.

This isn't the first or the last time things haven't gone as planned. This is a normal part of traveling, and I'm flexible enough to roll with the punches.

I had anticipated this day for weeks. My husband ended up with a 4-day weekend, and we were kind of unsure what his schedule was going to be like until the last moment (he thought he was going to go out of town, but that was cancelled), so a weekend trip was out of the question. But since we knew for sure he would have today off, I told him that we needed to drive up to Deception Pass.

Well, we started out a bit later than I had hoped. No big deal, though. It's not like we had a particular agenda.

Then one of the dogs got sick in the backseat of the car while we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in downtown Seattle. Again, not a big deal. I keep a towel in the car for just such a reason (if you're a dog owner, you pretty much have to), and I have leather seats. I managed to scoop up most of it. When we got north of Seattle, we stopped at a gas station, where I completed the clean up.

We hit the road again, and got stuck in traffic again because of a bad accident. So all in all, it took about 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to Deception Pass - probably about 45 minutes longer than it should have.

But it wasn't all bad. We drove through downtown Mount Vernon, which I found very cute. We were in Mount Vernon last year but saw a completely different part of it, which we didn't find so impressive.

Anyway, we arrived at Deception Pass around 1:30. We crossed the bridge over to the Whidbey Island side of the park. We scouted out a picnic spot, which were difficult to find since the park was so crowded. I think we got lucky.



Nice view, eh?

Anyway, we ended up not staying too long. Between the crowds and trying to keep the dogs calm (easy with our older one, not so much with our younger one), we realized that perhaps hanging out and hiking wasn't really going to work. We didn't know our way around the park and only saw one trail while we were there, and it was one that led to the bridge. We decided not to take the dogs on that trail because that seemed to be the one that everyone was hiking.

We ended up crossing the bridge back over to the Fidalgo Bay side and walking a trail at Pass Lake. Nobody was there. Once we felt like the dogs had sufficiently stretched their legs, we headed home. I think we just ran out of steam.

It happens. But Lance thought it was beautiful up there and suggested that perhaps we go camping next time so we can stay longer.

Not many pictures, but you can see some here, if you feel so inclined.