In my previous post, I mentioned that the next series of photos would be from Death Valley. That was wrong. We had visited Anacortes over Thanksgiving last year and I have some nice photos from our time there.

One day I drove up Mt. Erie, the highest point on Fidalgo Island at 1,273 feet (388 m). The view from the top is great, although the trees are growing up and are starting to interfere. Here is the view looking southwest, with the snow-covered Olympic Mountains across the Salish Sea. Click on the picture to see a full-sized version.

No trip to Anacortes is complete without a stop at Washington Park. I took the circle drive later in the day with a beautiful fall sunset in the sky.

I stopped and took a walk through the woods. With the fading light the turned leaves looked like they were glowing in the dark.

It was a typical, damp November afternoon in the Pacific Northwest.

I stopped at the Burrows Channel Viewpoint. The sunset was just beautiful. A boat came by at just the right time to complete this picture.

Another regular stop when visiting Anacortes is Deception Pass State Park. This is a great park spanning Deception Pass. We planned to hike up to Goose Rock Summit, a relatively short hike from Deception Pass parking lot in the Park. We bought our Discover Pass (which can be done on-line and printed) so we’d be legal and support the park. Things started off a little rocky because the parking lot we wanted to use was closed. We parked at the North Beach parking lot, adding about three quarters of a mile to our round-trip to the summit. We crossed under the Deception Pass Bridge which provided in interesting view.

From the far side of the highway, we discovered that there is a parking area near to the trail and just a quarter mile from the summit. It was a relatively easy hike up to the summit. We were favored with a non-typical November day that was sunny, clear, and just gorgeous. The view across the Salish Sea was amazing.

Looking northwest we could see across the Rosario Strait to Lopez Island.

It was even clear enough to see Mt. Rainier in the distance.

Now it was my turn to make a mistake. I figured that the path going down the other side would quickly turn back to the way we came. It didn’t. By the time we figured that out, we had climbed down a pretty steep path and didn’t want to turn back. So we pressed on, going all around the west side of the park with another mile of hiking. I wasn’t popular with the rest of the hiking crew.