Coal Creek Park Trail

These are pictures from about April 27th of this year and I’m just now getting around to posting them. I had hoped to make a return visit to this trail to take better pictures but they don’t seem to be in a hurry to reopen the trail. It had some damage done to it ... I believe last winter? The trail is not dangerous at all and the bridges that are closed are not in bad shape at all (at least when we visited).

Obviously with the name of Coal Creek Trail, the hike is always along the creek bed. Sometimes the dogs can go down for a drink and sometimes it is way to steep.


Here is a few pictures of the waterfalls and the pictures do not do them justice. They are not majestic waterfalls by any means but quite remarkable.

It is a nice moderate trail and is about 6 miles round trip. It has some hills but just enough to get the heart pumping a little bit. A great trail and I hope they reopen it again soon.

Heather Lake Trail 4 - Washington State

I had worked most of this weekend and decided to take most of today off from work today. About 10:30 AM, I had gotten enough done for Bogie and I to make a quick hike. I wanted to hike something new but I also didn’t want to be disappointed. All previous trips to Heather Lake this year had given me a different experience. I wondered if there was any snow left up there at all and I never did make it entirely around the lake.





Bogie decides to go for a swim. Look at how clear the lake is. You can even see the dirt that came off of Bogie as he entered the water!

Here is a quick look at the peaks around the lake.


Here you can see about 1/2 of the way around the lake in an area that has the most bright green plant life you have ever seen.

Just a little bit further, we have to go over an avalanche snow pack. The only snow left this time of year. I was a little bit nervous because you don’t really know if the snow will give away. I didn’t go anywhere near the edge.


Just short of making the entire loop, there is a section with some exceptional tree damage. Bogie and I had to go up and over ... or ... crawl under in places to get around it.

Licorice Fern Trail - Cougar Mountain

Today the sun came out early and Bogie and I headed out for some trail action. Going out the door, I was thinking of going to the Lime Kiln Trail, that I had done earlier in the year but my camera wasn’t very good. Then decided to do the Coal Creek trail, which I had done earlier with poor pictures. We arrived at the Coal Creek Trail to see signs everywhere that the trail was closed. So looking at the 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Seattle book, we decided to do the Licorice Fern Trail.


Now the trailhead for this trail is absolutely silly. It is literally just off to the right of someone’s driveway and down a hill just enough you cannot see the sign. However, we did and it was a pleasant trail. Lots of ferns, most and pleasant woods landscape. Nothing remarkable on the way and it evidently interscects a number of other Cougar Mountain trails. There is a (quote / unquote) lookout but you cannot see anything due to tree growth.



The signs for all the trail intersections is quite good and it is kind of ironic because these trails are right by the Squak Mountain trails. Both have lots of trail intersections and one does a fantastic job and the other does an awful one. The Squak Mountain trails were the ones I got lost on for 2 hours due to misleading signs on the east side.

If you are a trail runner, you will probably like this trail quite a bit because there was a lot of trail runners there. I haven’t done any trail running in the last few years and miss it quite a bit. With Bogie about 9 years old now and me nearly 50, not sure if / when I’ll get the trail running inspiration again.

After trail car ride happiness!

Little Mount Si - Washington State

Well, I have hiked this trail a half dozen or so through 2006 and 2007. I’ve enjoyed this hike very much but had concentrated on doing other hikes this year. With too late of a start for my second hike today on my midweek day off hike, I decided to pay another visit to this trail.





I had forgotten what a nice steady workout this hike can be. Today it was in the mid 80’s on the parking lot and there have been a few changes to the area around the trailhead.

However, the hike was marvelous and Bogie & I enjoyed a little leisure time on the peak of Little Mount Si. Bogie was truly fascinated when the local squirrels began to gather their early fall bounty. It was quite entertaining and the squirrels gave Bogie very limited respect and he found that a great way to spend a day.

Twin Falls / Olallie State Park

Well, we got off to a later start than I had hoped. I didn’t finish in the office until around 11 AM, so didn’t make it to the park until almost 12:30 PM. I wanted to get this trail done in a hurry and try to do a second hike to Mailbox Peak. However, that wasn’t going to happen because the trailhead for Mailbox Peak took some time to find. It was stated as a 5 to 7 hour hike and it wasn’t until 2:30 PM before I got there. So I decided to do Little Mount Si as my secondary hike.

I only made it to the first of the two twin falls and think I might have cheated myself a bit. I think next time I will do the Mailbox Peak hike first and then try to do Twin Falls afterwards. The hike was very straight forward and quite easy. The traffic on the trail was light and look forward to doing it again. The first falls that I did see were magnificent! Not as close as the Bridal Falls trail but still the view was well worth the trip.

Three Blind Moose - Chardonnay

Well, I wandered into Albertsons here in Snohomish and they were having a wine sale of 20% off of purchases of 6 bottles or more. Being the lifelong bachelor that I am, I purchased the essentials of one block of cheese and six bottles of inexpensive wine. I picked up this chardonnay because the bottle looked cool. It wasn’t bad at all, very light and it was gone before I knew it. It certainly wasn’t good enough to become the wall paper on my second 22 inch monitor but there it is. Check out their web site at ... http://www.3blindmoose.com.

By the way, I write everything I post originally in a FileMaker database and it doesn’t recognize the word Chardonnay, now that is just wrong.

Anyway, it was cheap, good and gone way too quickly.

Barclay Lake Trail - Washington State

Well, this entire week is supposed to be ugly but when the sun came out for a moment ... I had to take my chance. We headed back out highway 2 to Barclay Lake, just on the other side of Index. I had my doubts at first but it turned out just great.

As you can see, it began to look kind of nasty as we came up for the turn off for the trailhead.



Here you can see that bogie is certainly ready for some trail action.




The lake was very pretty and the trail up to it was a nice smooth 2.5 mile trek.

There were a number of campsites around the lake, sounds like a good place to visit some evening.


Here are some shots of a creek and a very cool bridge that we covered.

Yeah, we are done! A couple hours later and we are headed back home.