Fidalgo Island Crossings

This past week, I caught a couple of glimpses of Mount Baker .  This active volcano in the Cascadia Subduction Zone is Washington's third tallest mountain , the fifth tallest in the Cascade Range and the most glaciated of all the Cascade peaks.  It can be seen from several places in this area.  This first photo was taken from the dike in the tidal wetlands of the Skagit River Delta .  This Fish and Wildlife unit is one of the best birding sites in Skagit County. While I was taking the photo of the mountain, a young Bald Eagle flew right over me.  When I hiked back out, I spotted him perched above the dike trail in a dead tree.  He posed nicely while I took his picture.  When I moved on, he let me walk directly under him without even flinching.  I saw a total of five eagles on this hike, including one at the nest south of the duck blind. The next day, I went out to the Samish River basin and the " West 90 " site, another great birdin...

On New Year's Day I attended the fourth annual First Day Hike at Deception Pass State Park.  This has become an annual event in state parks around the U.S.  In Washington State, I counted 28 First Day Hikes on the State Park calendar .  This year's hike at Deception Pass took us to Ginnett Hill , one of my favorite places in the park. We assembled at the trail head in the Pass Lake parking lot at 10:00 a.m.  Our hosts were Jack Hartt, Park Manager and Carly Rhodes, Park Interpretive Intern.  Our group was at least 60 to 70 strong.  Again this year, the hike had two legs.  The first took us about a mile to the meadow on the north shore of Pass Lake.  Then we doubled backed part way to the Ginnett Hill Trail for the second leg.  This trail took us another mile through a rain forest and up to the old homestead site at the top of Ginnett. The weather was chilly but perfect for the hike.  At the start, the temperature was below ...

The New Weather Station Setup My Davis Vantage Pro2 wireless weather station provides data for the Current Weather  page on this website.  The station console has been connected to my main desktop computer via a WeatherLink USB module.  The WeatherLink software performs the uploads to this site, CWOP , Weather Underground , the WeatherLink Network and to the Northwest Weather Network (as "Anacortes"). The December 9, 2014 windstorm took out our power for about 8 hours.  Even with surge protection, pretty much nothing worked on that computer when the power was restored.  Using Windows Explorer or right-clicking would send it into a "Not Responding" freeze-up.  There were no restore points and it behaved like it had no file indexes.  It could take several minutes to open a folder.  I did manage to start the weather station and get the uploads working again.  After running overnight, it seemed to repair itself somewhat, but it wasn't ...