Another Great Day of Hiking

Here is a view as we were beginning today's six-mile hike in San Felasco Hammock State Preserve. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place, but don't take my word for it. Just try to put yourself in the photo. As followers probably know, we are planning to do the Camino again this year, but we have come to enjoy the dreaded "training" almost as much as the main event.

Hoh River Trail in the Sunny Rain Forest

My definition of an awesome day might be: Sunny, 60s for hiking, blue sky, puffy clouds, snow capped mountains in the distance, not too steep hills along the trail. Bingo.

Today we drove to the Hoh Rain Forest, and it did not rain. Perfect weather. Fantastic trail. We hiked a bit more than 6 miles after having stopped at Kalaloch Lodge for wonderful brunch. The first photo is at Kalaloch, on a cliff over the beach/shore. The rest are along the trail at sunny Hoh Rain Forest.

Lake Quinault, the Temporate Rain Forest, and Ruby Beach

Wednesday was a travel day. We drove south past the clouded and invisible Mt St Helen's, west along the Columbia River Valley, and north to the Olympic Peninsula National Forest and Park. We passed through Hoquiam, and former lumbering town. We have never seen a more boarded up, desperate looking town. It was an amazing sight.

We are staying at the Lake Quinault Lodge. The lake is 10-15,000 years old, formed by a 1,000 foot high glacier. Thursday we hiked about 8 miles in the Temperate Rain forest...in the sunshine! Friday we hiked about 5 miles along a couple of stretches of the ocean shore line. Hard walking there, for sure, but beautiful!

Mt. Rainier

Tuesday

The rain had not yet begun when we woke up at 7:00 and we had another great view of the snow-capped Mt. Rainier out our window. We donned our backpacks and headed out to grab a bit of the forecast-to-be-awful day. We hiked about 4 miles of the Wonderland Trail, through Fir, hemlock, and cedar again. The aromas of the woods were almost the best part. But the amazing numbers of fallen trees were also surprising. They must take forever to rot because there were tree trunks all around us that were so big that three people could not have hugged them finger-tip to finger-tip. It showered enough that we wore our raingear, but not enough that the rain dribbled onto our pant legs. A fantastic morning outing.

While I was doing laundry…the Inn had free washers and dryers for guests…an employee came in to do his wash. Jason is working here for 4 months to help fund his university tuition in Jamaica. He bought The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses! I was fun to sign his copy and tell him to tell his mother for me that she’d taught him well how to do his own laundry.

The rain finally came in heavily. It has been a steady downpour since noon. People have been filtering in who are hiking the long trails. They are eager to not spend the night in tents. Wet backpacks are everywhere. People are sharing rooms with strangers to avoid the night outdoors. Having shared bathrooms and showers seems not even a hardship compared to their arrangements!

Wednesday we headed for the Olympic National Park. We'll report on that next.

The Festival of Cheeses, Mt. Rainier's Longmire and Paradise Trails

The Festival of Cheeses was amazing as always. We went to the awards ceremony this year…the first time for us. It was held in the Symphony Hall in Seattle and the Festival followed in the lobby areas. I especially enjoyed seeing the awards announced after having volunteered during the judging. The crowd applauded robustly. One of our favorites from The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses…Kunik, from Nettle Meadows Goat Farm and Creamery…won in its category. The Best in Show was won by Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve, made by a cheesemaker couple everyone admires. It was touching to see them receive the plaudits.

Off to the Wilderness

Now that the conference is over, we are off to the wilderness. The drive was not too hard, about 3 hours. The last hour was rural, although the rest was through suburbia.

We stayed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning at the National Park Inn in Mt. Rainier National Park. There are no cell towers, so we will be delayed in posting this until we emerge again into civilization. The lodge was built in the 1930s and has not changed much. There is a lovely living room with a big fireplace. Our room is modest in size and amenities…but large enough for two happy campers to sip some wine and chill out before our dinner downstairs.  The bathrooms are shared…both the men’s and women’s are down the hall with a couple of stalls each. There are only 2 showers for all the rooms. They did give us big plush robes to wear and slippers too. We will probably tolerate being a bit dirtier than usual. Russ is recording a description which I’ll post if I can figure out how to do that with our new laptop.

Our lodge is about 10 miles into the park. On Sunday, when we arrived via rental car that we picked up at the Seattle airport, we had lunch here and then drove in about 15 more miles to another area with a lodge, Paradise Inn. That lodge is much larger and we are happy with our cozy one. We took a great hike in the Paradise area. It was in the 40s and cloudy…quite high elevation. The wildflowers are spectacular. We also saw an elk, a fox, a Clark’s nuthatch (big as a jay), a family of quail-like birds (Ptarmigans?) we haven’t yet identified, and a marmot. I’ll post a few photos. We got our hiking feet under us, with about a 4 mile up and down…good practice for Florida flatlanders. We hope to hike a lot Monday and Tuesday, but rain is threatened. 

Monday at Mt Rainier

Despite promised clouds and showers, the morning was spectacular. We awoke to a view of the volcano out our window. The shared showers had no waiting line and we hit the trails pretty early. Unlike Sunday afternoon, we had our backpacks and walking sticks this time, thank goodness because we picked another steep trail. No meadows today, huge tall trees climbing straight up a mountain side with us. Really beautiful. The sun stayed with us. Temperatures was in the low 50s. We hiked about 2 miles up in about 2 hours and then back down in about 1.5 more. Going up we sweated and breathed a lot; going down we wore jackets against hypothermia and our knees complained a bit. All in all, it was great. We were back only a short while before the clouds came in and showers started.

Training for the new hiking season

What a gorgeous Florida day! The temperature was in the 70s and the sun was shining. We proclaimed it Day 1 of the new training season. We have yet to decide where to hike next spring or summer. But we want to hike and that means it is time to start getting prepared.

We went to San Felasco Hammock, our favorite place to take long hikes close to home.The last time we were there was about May 8. It felt good to be back. There were no mosquitoes, only a few yellow flies, and we only brushed off one tick...a good day! We finished the 5.6 mile trail without much trouble...of course getting out of the car when we got home was a bit of a struggle.

Jake can't hike those distances any more. We took him out for about a mile before we left. We missed having him along.

The first thing we saw when we stepped onto the trail was a deer.

The trail is still green and still lovely.

A loblolly pine had split leaving only a stick standing while the rest of the tree fell over.

Hiking in the Neighborhood

The days have not yet turned cool. It is often in the 80s by 9 in the morning. We like to walk early to beat the sun. Mornings this week have been foggy and quite lovely. We have a convenient path that is about 2.5 miles in length. It takes us from our house east along a grassy route between the road into our neighborhood and a county park, then south along a power line cut that is maintained by Gainesville Regional Utilities as a wildlife area. From there we turn back to the west and cut through the park we walked next to on the first leg of the route. Finally we come north through a neighborhood and get to see who has planted new flowers and who has good looking figs, oranges, grapefruits, and pomegranates in their yards. The photos are taken this week along the power line cut.