A Weekend of Hiking

We planned on going up to Chinook Pass on Saturday and hiking to Sheep Lake. By the time Saturday morning came around, one thing led to another and we never made it.

For one thing, we wanted to go to the G.I. Joe's sidewalk sale that was in its final weekend. Then on Saturday morning I got a call from Sarah that she was back home from her week in Yellowstone with one of her friends and their family. It also turns out that Teresa was having her annual garage sale, so we took the opportunity to drop by their house for visit. That gave everybody the chance to meet each other. Sue got to meet Teresa and her friend Noelle, and vice-versa. Everybody seemed to be totally fine and got along well, but as I told Sue later that probably gave them lots of gossip fuel--Teresa and Noelle love to talk about people. Sarah had a ton of great pictures on her laptop from her vacation and we took a few minutes looking over them. From there we went up to the the sale at G.I. Joes. It sucked and we bought zilch. At that time we decided that we would postpone the hike at Sheep Lake until Sunday and would instead go to the Snoqualmie Days event in the little town of Snoqualmie. After all, it was supposed to be nicer on Sunday anyway.

I think the event was actually called Snoqualmie Railroad Days. They have a lot of antique trains in the town, and during this event they actually give rides. There were the usual vendors that are present at most all of those sorts of events. We wandered all around taking pictures of trains and things, and eventually made our way a couple of miles up the street to Snoqualmie Falls. As you might guess during an event like that, it was pretty busy. We took a bunch of pictures of the falls and decided to hike down to the river level at the bottom of the canyon. I have lived here all my life and had never been down that trail. It was quite the workout! It was one thing going down the trail--That woke up the calves. Coming back up though--That was quite another thing. We had to take numerous stops to rest up. After all, we are a couple of 50+ year-old softies, and the trail was pretty steep. We ended up getting some pretty good pictures though, from both the top and the bottom of the falls. I'm glad we went.

The day was absolutely flawless up there on top of Chinook Pass yesterday. The hike to Sheep Lake is a great one for novice hikers (about 2 miles each way), and in my opinion, was easier than the trail down to the bottom of Snoqualmie Falls. We had a great time and took lots of pictures. We saw some awesome scenery, and had a good time feeding a "campsite robber" jay bird of some kind at the lake end of the trail. He wouldn't quite eat out of our hands, but came pretty close and made for some good pictures. While we were there at the top I ended up getting practically eaten alive by mosquitoes. While we both "dosed up" with bug juice prior to that, they still managed to find the spots that we missed. Suzie had the misfortune of losing her prescription bifocals on the way though, and we didn't notice they were missing until we were well over halfway to the end. We spent the entire hike back with our heads down, scanning the trail. Luckily, someone had found them ahead of us, and they were waiting on top of the little pay box in the parking area near the info maps. What a relief! After we got back to the car, we drove back a mile or two and stopped on the west side of the pass, wandering off up a trail for more pictures. We sat in the sun up there for an hour or so before finally leaving there as the sun was beginning to dip. We ended up getting home last night at about bedtime.

For such a softie, I'm not sore at all this morning, but I do still have a pretty puffy right eye. A mosquito bite above my eye has transformed itself overnight into somewhat of a hive-like puffiness all around my eye. While it's not all that noticable because I wear glasses, when I take them off, hoo boy!

It was a great weekend and I really enjoyed getting out in nature. I'm sure we will end up doing that more and more often. Keep an eye on our picture site--While they're not up yet, pictures of our weekend will most certainly appear there soon!