Month: September 2018

I did a nice walk with Brittany and Christopher yesterday.  There they are at the very low water level Rattlesnake Lake.

We walked up the IHT (now re-named the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail) to the Christmas Lake trail, hung out there for a little while and then headed back towards the car.

But they had never been to Rattlesnake Lake so we walked over to the lake and across the (see picture above) extended shoreline.  The low water level is not surprising for this time of year.

Anyway, Christopher saw a large rock in the distance and we walked over to see if he could climb it.  Well, he did and rather easily:

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny fall day and it was fun to hang out with Britt and Christopher.

Ken and Mike and I met at a Starbucks in Monroe at 6 am for the long ride into the North Cascades to hike the Diablo Lake Trail.  We got to the trail head about 8:45 or so and the ride was worth it.

The hike itself was far from exhausting.  We only went about 4 miles (it turns out – we had a happy and unexpected ending to our hike) with not much elevation gain.  But the trail was very nice.

Basically, we hiked to a ridge above Diablo Lake and up to Ross Lake, overlooking water and mountains, and inside forest the entire way.  Looking up or looking down was always fun:

We hiked to the end of the trail and decided to take a detour down a switch-backy side trail to the water.  We crossed the lake just shy of the dam on a suspension bridge:

We encountered a notice directing us to go up the road, through a tunnel and down another road to a dock where the Diablo Ferry ran.  We had no intention of taking the ferry, as we had learned at the start that the only ferries were early in the morning and late in the afternoon.  It was about 10:45 or so when we found the dock.  We were just curious and looking to extend the hike a bit.  We fully intended to hike back the ~4 miles.

As we were standing there a boat came zooming by and the pilot yelled at us that the ferry wasn’t until 3:30.  He went to the area of the dam and picked up some passengers, fellow employees of the City of Seattle (which manages the area – some of Seattle’s water comes from this location).  Jokingly, Mike and Ken stuck out their thumbs as if hitching a ride.

And sure enough the boat stopped and they asked us if we wanted a ride back.  Well why not?

Wow, what nice guys!  So we rode back to near where we were parked in style.  How cool is that?

So, all in all, a nice walk in the woods, great scenery (the mountains in the area are majestic) great company – it’s nice to be retired.

9/18/2018 – Here is a photo Ken took of the boat on which we hitched a ride.

The plan yesterday was that Jan (aka Granny) would hang out with the kids while Derek and I hiked to J’s Landing.  However, principally because the weather was so wet we wound up hiking on nearby Taylor Mountain – a first for both of us.

Taylor is the first mountain east of Tiger Mountain, accessed via Highway 18.  The route we took was not particularly steep (but far from flat) but we did get in a nice hike through the woods, roughly 5 miles.  Much of it was on a very nice trail, as shown above.

We also ran into a very cute caterpillar:

We didn’t see any other hikers on the way but we did encounter one person on a bike and two people on horses.  For sure, this is a popular area for horses as the evidence of their presence was plentiful.

First hike in several weeks, as Jan and I spent two weeks out of the country.  We flew into London on 8/27, spent a week there, and then flew to Shannon, Ireland, took a bus to Ennis, and there began a Rick Steves ‘Heart of Ireland’ tour.

But now it is back to normal. Schedule to hike tomorrow with Ken and Mike to Diablo Lake – should be great.