My husband was still in bed asleep when I woke up, so I stood by the bed hoping that my looming presence would wake him. It did not, so I poked him in the forehead. He jumped and said "what do you want"? I said where do you want to go today - Raptor ridge or North Butte? He said "North Butte". To explain my behavior I'll go back to the previous evening. He had asked me what I wanted to do the next day. *We've decided that Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays will be our long activity days - anything we wanted: walk/running, hiking, biking etc. That night I couldn't come up with an answer but by morning I had. I knew the day was already getting ahead of us, hence the forehead poke.
After breakfast we packed up and headed for the trail head at Blanchard mtn. We parked at the lower lot and headed up the trail at about 11:30. That is a late start for as many miles as we hoped for today.
The forests were full of fall color.
The first section of trail was short and ended at the upper parking lot, from there we walked up a logging road. There were lots of big leaf maple leaves on the ground.
Even the old gravel pit was decked out in fall finery.
We then turned off of the road and headed up the alternate incline trail.
A small mushroom standing tall.
We made our way on the British Army trail which is also part of the PNT trail.
Lizard lake.
As we were turning around to leave, my husband saw a ripple of movement in the flat water surface. We searched for what had made the disturbance and we watched as a Beaver swam by in the reflection on the lake. If you enlarge the three photos below you'll see it a little better.
Our lunch destination: North Butte.
We sat on the rocky top and enjoyed the sun's warmth as we ate.
Time to head back down the trail, we stopped at Lily lake and I saw an Eagle fly overhead.
Small mushrooms surround the mossy roots of a tree as we made our way towards the Oyster Dome trail.
Sun rays through the forest.
I enjoyed the textures and colors on this rocky wall. There was also water dripping down the mossy areas.
A hazy view at Samish Overlook, looking out towards the San Juan Islands.
The view to the south was a bit hazy also, but we could still see quite a bit of the Skagit Flats.
Fall colors peaking through the forest as we made our way on the Larry Reed trail.
I've never seen the trail as watery as it was today. Water was literally flowing down the trail in places like a river. We've had a lot of rain lately and the ground was pretty saturated. We spent some time doing what we enjoy as we made our way around the loop - we like to create spill ways for the water puddles that build up on the trail. We like to divert the water off of the trail unlike this section on Max's Shortcut where it was flowing for quite a ways down the trail. There was no place to divert it off of the trail.
This is the bridge just before the trail intersects with the road,
and the creek that flows under it. Today it looked every bit like a waterfall.
We stopped to enjoy the fall colors along the road as we walked up to the upper parking lot.
Some of the heart rocks I found on the trail today.
We finished our hike on the short trail that went from the upper parking lot to the lower parking lot. It was just beginning to get a bit dark in the forest, but we finished without using our headlamps. Although one stumble by me near the end told me that I was a bit foolish to not have mine on for that last stretch. It was about 6:30 when we finished, so a bit dark in the dense parts of the forest.
Relive video of our route:
Garmin stats:
total miles hiked - 12 miles
total ascent - 2221 feet
total descent - 2293 feet
Nice! It sure was a lot of rain, more than two inches around here. I like that loop myself. :-)
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