Pine and Cedar lakes hike

It was a very dark, and wet day on the trail today. It was so dark that I had to turn on the back-light on my Garmin watch to read it. My husband and I are going to try to make Thursday's our elevation gain training day. We will try to hike "up" a substantial amount of ascent on these days to go along with our long activity days: Tuesdays and weekends (either Saturday or Sunday). So trying to get 3 long/hard days in a week. This hopefully will not only help us in our Spartan races, but also our backpack plans in the summer. 

We decided to begin our winter "gain" hiking with the Pine and Cedar lakes trail. The first mile is nice and "up", just what we wanted.

 After a mile or so of hiking I no longer had anything dry to dry off the camera lens on my waterproof camera, so you'll get a true "picture" of how the day was. 

A lot of trees came down in the fall wind storms this year. The trail crew have done a great job of keeping most of the trail clear.

After we got up the main ascent section of the trail, I took a video to show the conditions of the day. It was breezy and at this point a slushy mix of rain and snow was coming down.

https://youtu.be/c74VDpoURpk

We hiked out to Pine lake first and the bog board trail section.

Again a mix of snow and rain at Pine lake.

https://youtu.be/yWHOU9L6nfQ

We then headed to Cedar lake and hiked around it. We were planning on eating our lunch there but no luck, we didn't even take the time to sit down. It was wet and cold everywhere, we took a standing break and had a quick snack and a cup of hot cocoa. 

It was actually snowing more now and the wind had picked up.

I got a nice video of the snow falling as we left the lake, very pretty.

https://youtu.be/EZutRBjo8pI

As we were heading up the overlook trail, we had to find our way around these trees that had fallen over the trail.

Needless to say there was no view at the overlook.

We continued eating trail snacks that we had in our pockets, as we made our way down the dark trail.

Lunch was to be in our car as drove home. 

A great day on the trail with our bonus snow at the Lakes.

Relive video of the days route - https://www.relive.cc/view/e1039027381
or watch on YouTube
https://youtu.be/rOQOqehWIFM

Garmin stats:

total miles hiked - 7.25

total ascent - 1939 feet

Mon Oeuvre ~ On Ringo Lake Mystery Quilt progress 2

The first clue has been released from Quiltville. Each Friday is clue release day. I always print the instructions since the clues will be removed after the Quilt reveal in February.

I was happy that the first clue was easy for me, not too many to make so it went fairly quickly. 

Strips cut and sewn together.

More cutting. Making sure my seams nest. I made one practice patch to make sure I understood how to do it and to make sure it measured to the right size before I continued. I learned a valuable lesson with last years Mystery Quilt en provence. Don't cut up all of the fabric into strips, cut only a few at a time - then calculate how many squares I can get from one strip and only cut out that many strips. I did much better with this years first clue. I only have one cut strip left over.

The first two rows sewn together in a chain to save thread.  

Making it into a 9 patch.

First clue is done ✔

I love my little 9 patch!

"Oeuvre" (the works of a painter, composer, or author regarded collectively: "the complete oeuvre of Mozart" a work of art, music, or literature: "an early oeuvre" ORIGIN late 19th cent.: French, literally ‘work.’ - Oxford Dictionary.)