Day 3 (June 25): More Water

I'll tell you the story of jumping over barbed wire to leave a military installation but first let's talk about Deception Pass. Whidbey Island is separated from the mainland by a pair of bridges over Deception Pass, a waterway that separates Skagit Bay, at the north end of Puget Sound, from the eastern end of the Salish Sea, which generally separates the Olympic Peninsula (USA) from Vancouver Island (Canada). Our first approach to our vacation on Whidbey was from the north, using Deception Pass. It's a grand gateway, which made more sense when I learned today that it was a WPA project from the 30's.

On the way in on Sunday, we spotted a sign for Deception Pass Tours; on Monday we booked a reservation for Tuesday. The timing was fortunate because the waters today were perfectly flat instead of choppy, as they had apparently been recently. The boat is the same kind they use for Jet Boat Tours in Portland, and we were expecting a lot of full-throttle touring around the Bay. Instead, we got a really fantastic tour of natural wonders and local history. We spotted harbor seals, bald eagles, porpoises and some kind of bird (black, white, orange feet) that dives up to 250 feet in the water! Cate kept yelling, "when do we go fast?" and nobody threw up.

Those are harbor seals sunning themselves on the rocks.

This is "canoe pass," which is one of two spans (the other is deception pass)

There's a bald eagle nest near the top of the tree. Our guide says it's been there at least a dozen years and currently has a juvenile in it.

Our crew with our naturalist/tour guide, Dawn.

We hit up a local, Dawn-endorsed seafood joint for lunch called Seabolt. The restaurant is about a block away from their processing plant. Between then, Lily, Ali and Cate ate three pounds of steamed clams.

The rest of the afternoon was less glamorous. We acquired some missing/lost/broken gear at Walmart and then sent the weary kids to rest with their tablets. There was also some more beachcombing (Henry got replacement water shoes and had to test them out). Lily's been working on arranging her treasures on the deck of our house and Henry, somehow, came up with some kind of vertebrae!

Meanwhile, and I know you're dying to hear about this, Elise and I worked on a task for her job with an organization called Carry the Future. I'll take a minute to tell you about it, since I know you're still just waiting to hear about the Navy firing range I crossed before I got to the barbed wire.

A few years ago, Elise learned about Carry the Future and its work to support refugees from the middle east. CTF collected wearable baby carriers and distributed them to families who were coming ashore in places like Greece with all their possessions and also carrying newborns and infants. Since then, Elise volunteered on trips to Greece and France as part of these distribution teams. She has also become involved in planning and organizing the trips for other volunteers. You should check it out.

So, the firing range and the barbed wire. Thanks for hanging around (hi mom). There's a state park just north of us along the beach and the app I use for my running showed a network of trails within and beyond the park. So off I set for about two miles to a park and play area, hoping to scout this as an adventure for the family later in our visit. About a mile into this, on a trail filled with people out walking their dogs, I came across a sign that warned of leaving the state park and entering restricted navy property. The sign said "no" but the well-worn path said "yes" so onward I continued.

The next sign said that a red flag meant live artillery drills but there was just an empty flag pole. Not much further I saw the back of a similar sign. I wish I had taken a picture because it said "WARNING" in foot-high letters between what appeared to be quotation marks. One of my favorite peeves is inappropriate use of quotation marks, so I thought "WARNING" would be terrific, especially regarding live munitions. Alas, it just happened that the bolts attaching the sign to its structure were in just the right place to resemble silly punctuation.

Anyway, I was at a playground and seemingly safe. Seemingly. I stretched. I took pictures, I began running back, preferring a road around rather than another traverse of the firing range. Twice I passed "barricades" on the road. I use the marks because they would stop most motorized vehicles but not all and certainly were not a deterrent to bikes or runners. Also, there was a golf course across the road from the base. I passed another, weather-warn sign on the side of the road that once told people not to continue this way. A security guard drove the other direction and waved smilingly. I passed a radio tower about a hundred yards from the intersecting road that would take me home.

That's when I noticed the barbed wire. The other side of the fence was a mile from home. Retracing my (illegal) steps would be 3 miles and a legal route would be longer. Fortunately, I only have one small scratch on my shin to show for all of this. When I got home, I rechecked the route. If you ask Google Maps for walking directions, it disregards the "warning" and sends you either of the two ways I went. It even sends you driving through the barbed wire. Gonna have to do something about that.