In Our Back Yard

We don't really have ducks in our back yard. But we are less than a mile from Lake Padden Park, and there are lots of ducks and other wonderful things there, so we think of it as an extension of our back yard.

Take a look at this trail map of Lake Padden Park to get your bearings. The 2.6 mile / 4.2 km trail around the lake is very popular with walkers, runners, and cyclists. If you look at the top of the lake, where you'll see a green rectangle, you'll practically see our house -- it's just off the map, past where the green rectangle ends. That shaded area is a permanent greenbelt to allow run-off from the houses above the lake to very slowly filter through the soil and down into Lake Padden.

When the water in Lake Padden reaches a certain level, it spills into Padden Creek, and ultimately ends up in Bellingham Bay, as you saw in this earlier blip.

Looking at the trail map again, on the left side you'll see an area labeled Padden Gorge. That's where we were today, walking along a wide, uncrowded uncrowded trail, right alongside Padden Creek as it tumbled and bubbled on its journey to Bellingham Bay.

In the autumn, we can see wild salmon swimming upstream here to spawn. Today we saw this pair of ducks -- quite comical, as the male was as still as a statue, while the female was always head down in the water, feeding. And I saw an Indian plum flower bud about to open, bedecked with rain drops. And much more, but I don't want to show you all of the delights along this trail in a single blip!

We had Miss Annie with us today, so we couldn't walk the entire Padden Gorge trail, but we're already planning to return soon, and often.

(Addendum: My in-house salmon expert says we can't see salmon spawning in Padden Creek near Lake Padden, as their passage is blocked downstream where the creek is buried in a culvert under the road, but we can see them spawning in Padden Creek as it wends its way through Fairhaven Park.)