Part 2 of the Adventure -- Sunday, June 18, 2017

After lunching on chicken salad and shrimp salad, it is soon time for a short nap.

For the afternoon walk, I prefer my clean light blue Nikes, rather than the ones mud stained on Blake Island, and hike a trail to the west.  Loving history and geology, I spend some time reading the Interpretive Panel found soon after beginning the trail.  What is so cool to me is how the shape of Sucia was formed.  When you look at a map, you see it is in the general shape of a horseshoe, with smaller elongated fingers or rocks within the U.  

I read “The island is composed of two very different rock formations that have been brought together by low-angle faulting.  Fifty million year old river sediments have been slid over 70-million year old marine sediments.”

The formations are known as the Chuckanut Formation (blue) and the Nanaimo Group (gold).

Reading further: “Sucia’s horseshoe shape is the result of folding of the two bedrock layers into a U-shaped trough.  The beds have also been tilted at a steep angle, a feature known to geologists as a plunging syncline."

Now I imagine these plates turned up vertically, to resemble the map.

Somewhat satiated with this lesson, I continue with Herb on the hike on a wide enough trail which narrows in places as it gets near a cliff or up a steep hill.  At least four times I tell him I should turn back, as what’s ahead is too challenging for me.  However, he encourages me and I take some more steps, several more feet, several more yards.

Hey, it does get easier in places, and the Parks and Recreation employees have placed wooden steps into one very steep area, to make my life easier.

Along the way we come to some of the beautiful rock that makes up this island's foundation.

Willie: Yikes!

Herb:  What, Willie?

Willie:  You pushed pass a limb of an bush overgrown into the path, and its catch of raindrops smacked me in the face.  My glasses are specked with water droplets!

Herb:  Oh, sorry.

We laugh and drying my glasses, I can now see the flower of the day.

Along here we come to a muddy area and are able to step to the side onto some sparse grass, but uh oh, the next mud is not so easy to go around and I wish I had worn my shoes still mud stained from a trail on Blake Island.

Herb, ahead of me, tells me he has found my flower of the day.  Oh, this Chocolate lily is too beautiful to pass up, so I now have two flower photos of the day.  I suppose that is legal….

We ‘Find Willie’s Tug’ from several spots during the walk, and I especially like the one where we peek through the tree limbs.

Sitting at the dock in Fossil Bay, Sucia Island.

Tents dot several camping areas, which have their own restrooms, potable water faucets, and fire pits.  Meeting two young couples with backpacks and toddlers, we admire them for also hauling a dock cart full of firewood to their campsite.

We humans are not alone on the trail.  I see a cute shell with something moving, and am careful not to step on him.

Find escargot….

Willie of Willie's Tug,
   and of Walldog, Willie and Jake
   Sunday, June 18, 2017