Fourth of July a little late

Me, Holly, Al, Peggy, Mary

Our first "extra" hike of the season was yesterday, Monday, when eight of us headed south to the Fourth of July trailhead. These hikes take us farther away from home and give us a chance to have dinner together before heading back. Only five of us finished it, however, which makes a story all by itself. Here are the five of us, in a picture taken by a fellow hiker: Al surrounded by this newest group of "gal pals."

We had a fairly new (to us) hiker who ended up having some difficulty with the trail, so Jonelle and Steve, who was driving, took him back to Bellingham, and Mary came back with us. Three can fit rather snugly in Al's back seat, so it wasn't too crowded, plus we are all fairly close friends. Holly is back in town for a short while, and Mary joins us on our hikes occasionally. We made it to the best view, which is situated a little below the pass. There are no summit-type views, but the mountains were really pretty.

I think this is Snowfield Peak

These mountains are fairly high. This hike starts at a low elevation and only gets to 3,600 feet at the pass, giving us a total up-and-down of somewhere around 2,600 feet. Since the first part of the trail is fairly flat, the last two miles up are STEEP. I think this hike should be reclassified from "moderate" to "hard." The weather was almost perfect, with a light breeze and temperature in the 70s. As we sweated uphill, that breeze was sublime and made it much more comfortable, although we were in shaded forest most of time.

Diablo Lake from the overlook

Before we headed to Marblemount for dinner, Al insisted that we take a short trip to the overlook above Diablo Lake, which is this strange blue-green color. One of the informative plaques told me this:

As glaciers in the surrounding high country slowly wear down the mountains, the grinding of rock against rock produces a fine silt that meltwater streams carry into the lake below. This "rock flour" suspended in the water reacts with light to give the lake its blue-green color.

I was tired and a little bit grumpy when Al suggested we take this side trip, but I'm really glad we did. It is an amazing view, and I wouldn't have known what I missed. Al did, though, and since he was driving he made the right decision. Then we headed down to Marblemount for dinner.

Toasting our successful hike (Al had coffee)

 Today I have a bit of residual tiredness from hiking more than ten miles and having spent a fair amount of the day in a car getting there and back. I didn't get home last night until almost 9:00pm, after having met the others at 7:15am. Long day! I woke in the middle of the night worried about my garden, realizing that I hadn't watered it. At 5:30 this morning I was out watering, when I spied a beautiful zucchini, my very own produce! Just now I took its picture before I harvested it. These are small zucchini, ready to eat by the time they reach just a few inches long. There will be more to come, and the delicata squash plant has blossoms! Wow, this is fun!

There are so many things going on in my life right now that I feel just a bit overwhelmed. How would I EVER have time for a job these days? My sister reminded me that I'm ready for a haircut, so now I'm off to get that taken care of. And the bird seed has run out... okay, here I go! Hope you are having a great day, thanks for visiting me.
:-)