Post-Industrial Renewal - Bay to Baker Trail/Little Squalicum Park

For this walk I decided to do Bay to Baker Trail. Contrary to the name, the trail doesn't connect the bay and Baker (that would be a long trail). It goes from the bay and goes toward Baker, but it ends on Squalicum Parkway near Northwest Ave. I took it as far as the new Squalicum Creek Park, then took a loop back to the parking.

Parking is at the corner of Marine Drive and W Illinois St. (Alternatively, there is parking at Squalicum Creek Park off Squalicum Pkwy, and at low tide you can also park on the north end of Roeder Ave and walk along the beach to meet up with the trail as well.)

Bay-to-Baker Trail (from Little Squalicum Park to Squalicum Creek Park)
Bellingham Parks & Rec
Parking permit: None needed
Distance: 2.25 miles
Elevation: minimal

From the parking lot, a smokestack for Oeser Co. is clearly visible. The park is actually a Superfund cleanup site. Pollution from the wood treatment facility leached into Squalicum Creek. The park is also over an old landfill. Generally speaking, it's best to keep pets and kids out of the creek.

Getting on the trail heading east, you can look down into the main part of the park. This area is off-leash friendly for dogs, which my puppy appreciated. Heading west will take you down into the park, but I planned to loop back this way later.

There is a railroad crossing and I'm 95% sure the tracks are defunct, but use caution anyway. The end of the line is just a block away at a warehouse.

The tracks that run along the path are defunct, with well-vandalized train signals. The tracks eventually fade into oblivion.

I thought there was something strangely pretty about the meeting of the park and the industrial area.

Leaving Oeser Co. behind, the trail ventures into residential areas. I had to photograph this person's bees. It's too cold this time of year for them, so they're hibernating I guess. In the spring be warned that they have a lot of bees. They're friendly though, I think.

The tracks start to become more and more overgrown...

...until here they disappear into the brush. I believe they eventually reappear further inland, but for this walk this is the last I saw of them.

Eventually you hit two parks that are adjacent to each other. Birchwood Park is a small park on the north side of the trail that has a picnic shelter, a basketball court, and a playground.

On the south end at the bottom of some stairs is the newer Squalicum Creek Park . It has a baseball diamond, baskeball court, and a playground, and I was surprised to discover it also has a fenced dog park as well. There's still some development going on, so more may be coming.

I went down the stairs and looped clockwise around the park. There's a lot of fairly fresh landscaping here; when I checked on Google Maps ahead of time the satellite view actually showed the park still under construction. It's a decent sized park in an area that needed one.

In the southeast corner of the park, I took the gravel path that led up to the corner of Lafayette St and Maryland St. Straight down Maryland St, you can see the Bellingham Technical College campus.

A trailhead for Little Squalicum Creek Park is in the BTC parking lot, so I wandered around campus to find it.

There's the Oeser Co. smokestack again. This looks familiar, from a different perspective.

You have to take the trail out to the beach before it will connect with the upper trails. I let Ozzy lead the way.

Marine Dr crosses over the park.

There's also a railroad bridge, and a train was crossing as I approached.

At the beach, signs indicate the pollution in the water.

The run-off pours into the bay here. Lots of signs in the area remind local residents to not over-fertilize and prevent toxins from ending up in the water. I'm not sure they could mess things up more than the industrial pollution, though.

Still, it was a scenic day at the beach. Out in the middle of the bay, I could see Fairhaven Shipyard's "Faithful Servant" drydock barge loading or unloading something.

From the beach you just continue the trail uphill back to the parking lot.

That's it for 2015. Have a safe and wonderful New Year!