Picture of the week ~ Sky Heart

Raptor Ramble

Today my husband and I hiked up to Raptor Ridge from the north Chuckanut trail head parking lot.  We had planned on just going to Raptor Ridge and maybe an 8 mile day but on the way down, we decided to do a little adventuring so we got in a few more miles. Here's a photo of the trails in the area from one of the kiosks along the trail. I took it from the "you are here" arrow location. 

The red dot trail shows our route for the day, You can click on it to enlarge it.

I've been having some big toe & hip issues lately, and have been only able to run or walk about an hour without too much pain. At about two miles in my hip really started to bother me. We had pretty much figured that my hip pain is IT band related. I have a leg strap to use when it acts up and I had put it on, but it obviously needed to be adjusted. So I felt around the outside of my leg just a little above my knee and found exactly where it hurt and put the pressure point of the leg strap right on it. Between the strap and the toe covers, I made it through the hike with no pain the rest of the way. It's pretty amazing how that little strap placed in the right position takes all of the IT band pain away fairly quickly. Yahoo!

My miracle devices: the IT band strap for my right leg, my left big toe cushion and the right big toe side ball joint cushion -

Anyway back to our hike. We made our way up the Arroyo park trail, and through the Chuckanut falls trail. I really appreciate the new trail work done on Chuckanut falls section. We didn't hike to the falls this time.

On our way up to Raptor Ridge on the Hemlock and Raptor Ridge trails, I snapped a few photos of things that caught my eye,

Since it was so close to Valentines day, I thought it was great that there was a great big heart in the sky,

We ate our lunch at Raptor Ridge and then continued on down the trail towards the Lost lake trail. My husband has a little saw he carries in his pack in case he needs to use it. Today it got a LOT of use. Two areas on the Raptor Ridge trail needed some trail work done.

We then connected with the Lost lake trail. This is where the kiosk is that I took the photo of the map.

After walking a short distance on the trail (which is really an old gravel road), we decided to change our course and take the 1/2 mile trail to check out the Madrone Crest view.

After enjoying the Madrona trees along the trail and the view, we made our way back out to a junction just before heading back to the Lost Lake trail. Again a change of route, we decided to follow the Madrone Crest trail and connect with the Salal trail. The photo below shows the trail coming towards me (to the left of the sign post) that we hiked up from the Lost Lake trail to our Madrone Crest view trail. Just behind me is the trail we came from for the view rest break. Our destination from here was to go to our right and follow that section of the Madrone Crest trail.
Are you confused yet 😉.

More trail work to be done on the Madrone Crest trail.

After his hard work and my photo documenting, we hiked on down to the Salal trail, crossed the Hemlock trail and decided to join the Huckleberry trail. As we were heading down the Huckleberry trail, we came to the bench at the viewpoint and I spied a little tree still adorned with it's Christmas decorations! I thought I heard the song "Angels we have heard on high" wafting through the breeze or was it just my imagination......

We came to the Hemlock trail and retraced our steps from earlier in the day on the Chuckanut Falls trail, the Arroyo park trail and on to the north Chuckanut trail head parking lot.

Such a fine day to ramble around the Raptor ridge area, my leg survived and my toe is just a little bit sore.

Garmin stats:

total miles hiked - 11 miles

minimum altitude - 117 feet

maximum altitude - 1694 feet

total ascent - 2333 feet

total descent - 2037 feet

*don't you think that if a girl that loves purple finds a pair of beautiful purple hiking boots that they should be hers???

Yep, me too!

**disclaimer - my leg and toe were bothering me BEFORE I got the new boots!!!!!!