Trip to Bellingham to Celebrate Our 8th Wedding Anniversary

Ryan and I have been wanting to take a trip back up to Bellingham where we went to WWU, so our upcoming 8 year wedding anniversary provided the perfect opportunity.  We got off of I-5N at Chuckanut Drive so we could enjoy the very windy, scenic drive to our first stop Larrabee State Park. I had checked the tide tables the night before to figure out if we should stop on the way in or out, and the lowest tide was at 6:55am, so first stop it was!

 

Anytime we visit a beach I can promise you there will be rock throwing pictures!

 

 





I just love it out here. It was practically my second home while finishing my biology degree at Western. Many classes brought me out here for various projects: invertebrate zoology, evolution & ecology, population biology just to name a few.

 

The scenery here is just breathtaking, so yes, this will be a long post.

 

 

I helped Sean climb onto this rock, just beautiful with how the water and wind has eroded it.

 

 

We didn't make it when the tide was low enough to reach deeper tide pools where we would have found sea stars, but the shallower ones still provide an abundance of life.  Barnacles, crabs, shrimp, even a few small fish and much more.

 

This beach is also very sentimental for Ryan and I because it's where he proposed to me.

 

 

We sat on that log Sean is next to, eating a picnic we had packed before Ryan popped the question.

 



They of course had to chuck more rocks before they would willingly pack up and head to our next location. We parked in a south campus parking lot at Western. Ryan carried Taylor in the ergo on his back and we got on the Huntoon Trail on Sehome Hill.  The Sehome Hill Arboretum is another area I know very well from all of my biology classes. We regularly did studies on moss, lichen and other things on the hill. Ryan didn't know there was an observation tower at the top, he had gone through the tunnel at the top, so I decided he should definitely climb the tower! One unfortunate thing is I completely forgot how many bloody mosquitos thrive in the arboretum. I think Ryan and the boys were minimally scathed thanks to myself being a mosquito magnet....statistically favored blood type + running a degree warmer + I'm super allergic/get large hives = mosquito magnet. By about the fifth or sixth attack in a few minutes we just came to grips with the likelihood I would get West Nile...

 

 

We made it up the hill, made it up six flights to the top of the tower....now hurry back down!

 

 

Quick fleeing pic of the boys...I cannot overstate how many mosquitos there were..



Sean is so observant, he spotted this little guy :)

 

 When we lived in Edens South I used to hike up the tower a couple times per week. On the way down I saw that an artist had painted over the ugly concrete footings of a reservoir catch up there.

 

Ahh, Red Square. There are so many memories here, it was amazing to come back here with our kids...especially during the summer when the entire campus is empty. Sean loved the water fountain as we knew he would.

 



The view is as pretty as we remember it.

 

We were so lucky, the Miller Hall rose garden was in full bloom.

 

 

 We stopped at a place Ryan's been wanting to try, New York Pizza Restaurant & Bar. They happened to have a location in Bellingham. It was great and they super cheap prices for their all day Sunday happy hour.



 

This is about 5 minutes after getting back on I-5S....they were wiped out. It was a great day, very sentimental and fun to revisit our beloved WWU and Bellingham. We've been together for 10 years and are celebrating our 8 year wedding anniversary on Wednesday :)