Adventure Run (Anderson Island WA, June 9, 2013)

Last weekend, the Fremont 5K Friday night and Flying Wheels ride saturday were fun, but what I was really looking forward to was Sunday’s adventure run. Sleep in, just pack your supplies and wander around exploring your surroundings without any set route or agenda. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a fan of organized races, which have a course of certain distances already marked with aid set up, but I’m just not into collecting buckles or trying to make cut-off times right now. Rob’s wanted to see Anderson Island, which I’d never heard of. It’s a small island reachable by a ferry from Steilacoom south of Tacoma (which apparently has the state's oldest library and oldest penitentiary). The southernmost island in Puget Sound.

I have this deja-vu like I’ve been to Steilacoom before, but it takes me awhile to remember, a quaint small town with absolutely no parking within miles of the ferry, so we take the car onto the ferry. Once across, we drive around the island which looks a little like a mini-whidbey, and part at Anderson state park where there are only 3-4 parking spots carved into the bushes. This trail is lush but pretty gnarly, rooty, and buggy.

We bush-whack a patch to find a beach, get back on the trail and back onto pavement, which is always a relief for me. After a couple miles we find another trail which seems even gnarlier, and the foliage (including some fern porn) labeled with signage,

the random chimney in the middle of the forest.

Then we found another bigger beach all to ourselves to run along the pebbles.

Rob’s up ahead calling out, “poison oak” and “stinging nettles”. I’m still not really able to reliably identify poison oak but do remember the “leaves of 3 let them be”.

About an hour of that got a little old, so luckily one of us (not me) has a good sense of direction and got us back on the road. None of the roads are actually along the waterfront, which are occupied by private property, but we can see snatches of it.

Occasionally one of us points out something to look at, the abandoned ferry boat,

the donkey in someone’s yard,
wildflowers, but mostly we just ran in companionable silence. Still it is very different from running alone.

Navigating the roots and nettles in the muggy weather has made me a little sluggish and we only covered about 11 miles, but it’s OK. Catch this ferry or the next. Looking forward to where the next adventure run will be.