Wilderness Peak Trail

Six weeks til Peru!

Today we hiked the Wilderness Peak Trail in the Cougar Mountain Regional Wildlife Park. It was supposed to be a 3.5 mile loop, but we were a little confused at the top as the names on the trail signs didn't match those in our 8 year old hiking book. We made it back but my gps said we walked 5.3 miles. It took us a little over 2 1/2 hours.

We went early to try to beat the rain, but still got a soaking about half way through the hike.

The trail goes along a little creek.

 

 

There were glacial erratics along the trail. We took this selfie using our little gorilla tripod.

There was a little bog at the top with a log walk across it. This trail is very well maintained.

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Heather Lake Trail Hike

We hiked Heather Lake Trail on Saturday. It was 4.25 miles round trip with about a thousand foot gain in elevation. The trail crossed a lot of shallow water and some parts of the trail had water running along it. But the trail is gravelly along most of it so relatively little mud. At the top the snow was still thick, so we didn't do the loop around the lake. We'll save that for summer.

Sandra at Heather Lake

Sandra on the trail

Selfie at the top

 

Nita crossing water on the way up

Stump of old growth tree along trail

 

 

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Training at Tiger Mountain

Today we hiked Tiger Mountain near Issaquah to train for our Peru trip. It's about 45 minutes from Seattle, so that makes it convenient, but also very busy. When we started a little after 9, the parking lot was already mostly full. The Chirico Trail was built for hang gliders to hike up to two launching pads, one facing south and the other half a mile further up facing north. To get to the trail head you cross the landing zone for the gliders. Here's the warning sign at the entrance.

At the landing zone

 

The hike is almost 2.5 miles straight up with a 1500 foot gain. Here we are climbing up.

 

Sandra

Nita

At the south lookout point we saw Mt Ranier, but it doesn't show well in this selfie. We also saw a glider getting ready to take off.

 

 

We stopped for a snack at the north lookout. There were lots of people resting here and taking in the view. Here's a photo of us with the valley beyond.

 

It took us 3 and a half hours to complete the hike and we were pretty sore by the end. We saw a bunch of hang gliders above from the parking lot.

 

 

 

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Nita's 61st Birthday

Nita and I celebrated her birthday at Salty's.
Below Nita is wearing her new T-shirt.  She also got a slice of 'Classic' chocolate cake from Bakery Nouveau, she did share it with me and it was delicious.

New Rubber Boots

It was a little drizzly today and the tide wasn't that low, but we had to try out Sandra's new rubber boots for beach glass hunting on Alki Beach. We found lots of glass.

New sea glass hunting boots

Nita by the pier

 

Beach Glass!

 

 

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65 degrees in Kent

The weather was beautiful, so we played golf today.

 

 

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Sandra's new giraffe golf club cover!