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.

Wallace Falls Hike - Washington State

Well, we don’t get to many 90 degree days here and most apartments don’t have air conditioning because of that. In fact, my townhome windows are the kind that don’t support a window air conditioner. So what do I do when the heat hits? Why I go hiking of course. Funny, but with a lot of tree canopy and higher altitudes, it is not a bad idea.

I had planned to hike to a higher elevation lake today but traffic was too heavy and it was bugging me. I sometimes think that Highway 2 going through Monroe should be renamed to Parking Lot 2 Friday through Sunday. Anyway, we downshifted our plans to do the Wallace Falls State Park hike and it was very enjoyable.

Great view (even with the powerlines) right before the trail gets started.




There wasn’t that much traffic at the park at all and the trail itself had moderate traffic. There are lots and lots of water stops on the trail for Bogie, so I felt great about doing this trail. The heat even wasn’t too bad until we got back to the car.

Bogie seems to sense that this trail has plenty of water for him to drink and sink his furry body into.

All in all, a good midweek hike. I left the office at about 11:00, did the 5 + mile trail hike and back into the office by 4:05 PM. Not bad considering I made one quick stop to get some new running shoes and grabbed a sandwich on the way back. Still a couple hours left to do some work!

Federation Forest State Park Trail

We did a couple trails from the 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles Of Seattle book today and this was the first excursion. A terrific old growth forest alongside the White River Valley. I know it sounds silly but I really loved how many uprooted old growth trees there were with the entire root network base.

The trail is about 4 miles long and crosses WA 410. It is a very relaxing hike!


One reason I choose to do this was because of the listed Hobbit village. It really wasn’t like that, it was more like a gnome village with dollhouse sized exhibits. Very fun and enlightening, a very welcome break from the beauty of the trail.


The Interpretive Center was supposed to be closed but some of it was open for us. We looked around and read many of the displays. Here is a couple pictures from inside the center.


Some pictures from inside the center.