Quick second walk Saturday morning around the Rhododendron Park trails just south of Coupeville. Parking is free and plentiful at the main park lot off W Patmore Rd. Restrooms were open and in good condition at the playfield area. The trails are in relatively good shape, a few muddy spots but nothing problematic. There is significant signage, but it seems to routinely turn me around, (but the area isn’t huge so it really isn’t an issue.) The campground at the north end of the park is now back open after the covid related closures.
The native pink blooms are just about at peak right now and the area really is amazing - tens of thousands of individual plants with hundreds of thousands if not millions of individual pink blooms. Plus the whole area has a slight tropical scent that you don’t get from non-native cultivars. The eastern loop trail seems to have the most spectacular show currently. We even had a pair of big raven doing that interesting clicking/croaking call they sometimes do, adding an additional haunting element to the forest. One quick caution, the area is right off the northern end of the Navy’s OLF where they will sometimes do touch and goes with their F18s so having a backup plan is a good idea to avoid the noise if they are flying. Lastly, The Mill at the Kasteel makes a nice lunch spot to refuel just north in Oak Harbor.
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