The smoke has been terrible without much let up. The in-laws were itching for our first hike though, so I decided to give this new trail a go. It's a short ten-minute ferry ride from Gooseberry Point to Lummi Island just outside of Bellingham. Fare is $14 for car and driver and $8 per passenger (kids under 12 accompanied by an adult are free).
We parked at the Inati Trailhead and hiked to the Deer Fern junction. There's very little elevation lost to this point. The Deer Fern Trail goes over a hump and then descends steeply until leveling off before descending steeply again until you reach Granger Pond. On this section we passed the remains of a hawk or turkey from the look of the feathers.
From there it descends much less steeply until meeting a hairpin left turn at a road previously blocked by concrete barriers. Along here we passed a fresh pile of blackberry infused poop that I was certain to be bear scat. Subsequent searching of scat images and articles about bear sightings on the island confirmed it.
A little further down the road meets a junction with the Quarry Overlook Trail. Instead, with my 87-year-old father-in-law short of breath from the smoke, we took a short game type trail at the turn that quickly led to an overlook of the lower trail, quarry, and Bellingham Bay.
For more information, please see link below.
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