Picnic!

Ward's spread at the picnic

One of the things the Senior Trailblazers like to do is party, as well as enjoy agreeable hikes together. Norm and his wife Gina have a lovely summer home on Cain Lake, not too far away and allows us to bring the two hiking groups together for a nice gathering to begin the summer season. Both groups also like to get a short hike in beforehand, so this morning we met Norm and Gina at the parking lot at Lake Padden. They took our contributions to the potluck and headed home. They fire up the grill and provide hot dogs and hamburgers, as well as a cake to celebrate the seniors who have May birthdays (five!), while the rest of us get a little exercise.

Although it was a little cool with a 30% chance of rain, we lucked out with the weather. Our nice trail, as  seen above, had shade and sun throughout the morning. We didn't walk around the lake but instead took the horse trails around the southern part of the park. Not all of the trails were as pretty as this, but there wasn't a whole lot of mud, so we were delighted; there have been times when those trails were not much fun to navigate.

I snapped this picture of Linda and Karen as they joined the regular trail around the lake after we had traveled somewhere around six miles on the horse trails. You can see the sign that indicates it's a horse trail; we didn't see any, or even any signs there had been any around recently. We finished our hike just before noon, piled into our cars and headed to Cain Lake. The other group went to Alger Alp and arrived a bit later. All in all, there must have been close to forty of us gathered at this lovely spot. I walked out onto the dock and got this picture.

We had much better weather this year. As you can see from last year's post, it was cold enough to be wrapped in blankets on the back porch. This year it wasn't warm at all when the clouds blocked the sun, but it was still pleasant enough for us to enjoy being outdoors, and Gina lit the candles on the cake that was cleverly decorated with a dinosaur. That's our other host, Norm, on the right wearing the apron.

In visiting my post from last year, I realize that the picture I captured a year ago of a barn swallow is much better than the one I took this year (their next-door neighbor has nesting boxes for them and they were everywhere), so I'll skip it. However, I am always asked if we ever see any wildlife. I was fortunate to see this scary creature at Lake Padden this morning.

With the summer officially launched, next week we will visit another old haunt before heading up to the Mt. Baker wilderness area the following Thursday. We will be hiking on snow for quite awhile, and whether or not we are able to make it all the way to our destinations doesn't really matter all that much, since I know we will be having fun and getting exercise in the company of good friends!
:-)