Embracing 60

What to do for my 60th birthday? 

As my 50's decade was coming to a close I began to feel an urgency to start my 60's on an inspiring note. My husband and I began brainstorming ideas and finally settled on a long hike as I haven't hiked anything farther than 10 1/2 miles for several years. We decided to do a point to point hike. We dropped his car off at the North Chuckanut trail parking lot and my car at the Fragrance lake trail head across the road from Larrabee State park. The distance he came up with after looking at the trail maps of the area would be between 12 and 13 miles. Sounded good to me.

Ready to go!

We started hiking at 8:45 and began the uphill trek towards Fragrance lake. The vewpoint is always a must for us. The timing was right so I posed at 9:50 - the time of my birth!

At 9:50 am 60 years ago today I  became me!

We've had a lot of Southeast wind storms lately, so some areas of the local trails have some downed tree branches on them. My husband brought his trusty hand saw and did some trail work for us.

before -

and after.

after hiking around Fragrance lake we continued up the trail to a cleared logging area for a quick rest stop. A fun side note, we spotted Marjan and Frank from our Senior Trailblazer hiking group coming towards us and  we had a nice catch up chat before heading on our way. Marjan informed us that the faster group of Senior Trailblazers was just ahead of us on the trail. Small World!
(click to enlarge the panorama below)

My husband told me to look away for a bit and then said "ready, go ahead and look", and he had brought up a pink frosted cookie for my birthday complete with lighted candles. He then sang Happy Birthday to me. Such a sweetie pie.

After the birthday fun we continued our hike up the logging road to look out at the view looking towards the east. Dick is already there looking for our trail down.

If you click on the picture below you will notice Lake Samish in the valley on the right and Lost lake in the valley on the left. 

We hiked down a very long, steep and narrow trail off of the logging road to head down to eat lunch at the north end of Lost lake. I was so glad that I hike with trekking poles. It would have been very difficult for me to hike this section without them. It felt like a long way, but it was only 7.6 miles total at this point.  Apparently the steep trail down took more energy out of my than I realized, by the time we reached the lake I realized I was really tired. We brought a stove for cooking soup and tea, boy did that taste good. Just what I needed. Since we didn't know exactly how long it would take us to hike today we had packed warm clothes, extra food, headlamps, etc. in case the day got long and we had to hike out in the dark.

After lunch we marched off with renewed energy.

We passed so many signs on this hike they almost began to blur together.

We did manage to finish our hike quite abit before dark, with a total of 12.6 miles for the day!
 Here is the screenshot of our day, if you wanted to see it.
(click to enlarge)

All in all the perfect way to break in a new decade.

Yes, I shall embrace my new age - Today I am 60!

Endomondo stats:
12.6 total miles hiked
68 Min. altitude
1776 Max. altitude
3870 Total ascent
4261 Total descent