52. Schoolhouse Park, Guemes Island, Washington

I found myself with a Wednesday off work to look after Charlotte while her daycare was closed for a couple of weeks. I was looking to make an adventure out of my mid-week, day-long vacation and so we got up early (ish) and headed Stateside to picturesque Anacortes for the day. I have been through here many times and I wanted to bring Charlotte to visit this lovely spot that has such good associations for me, especially as I have ridden here on my bike at least a couple of times before. I had always wanted to take the ferry to Guemes Island and I figured that this would be the perfect opportunity: Charlotte would love bouncing over the waves, we could do some geocaching and maybe we would find a playground to hang out at for a while. The caching at the local beaches was so much fun that at first, Charlotte didn't even want to go to the playground! Throwing rocks into the water for Theo was pretty distracting... But eventually we headed inland and found the park, right in the middle of the island in a lovely, rural setting with no noise but the whisper of the wind and the chirping of the birds. The park was deserted when we first arrived, even though it was a lovely summer morning. Charlotte did some climbing and sliding while Theo and I made the most of some shade. Some big kids came up on their bikes with their parents just before we were starting to think about going, but they didn't seem interested in playing with little Charlotte and her big dog. There are no caches in the park, but in addition to the two we'd already found, we logged a couple more before we figured we'd better head back to Anacortes before the weekly dangerous cargo sailing held us up for longer than we would have liked. The playground is located at N 48.32.957 W 122.37.465 and is point 52 on the map at the bottom of home page.