An extraordinary day

Beautiful forest canopy in early morning light

Once again, eleven Senior Trailblazers showed up for our Thursday hike on a day filled with sunshine. We drove to the Blanchard Mountain trailhead to head up to Lily and Lizard Lakes, with a stop at the North Butte, which would give us a fantastic view on a day like today. When we climbed Blanchard Mountain at this time last year, we got rained on pretty much the whole day. This was the other side of the Pacific Northwest: full-on sun and flowers everywhere: mountain violets, salmonberries, and my favorite, trillium.

They come out quickly in the springtime and don't last long. Sometimes when we start our hikes in the High Country in midsummer, I will spy one a bit later in the season, but it's only because the snow causes everything at altitude to bloom later. Trillium have three petals and three leaves, and I love the way they look. Today we had dozens of them to admire.

After a quick stop at Lizard Lake for a snack, we headed on up to North Butte for the view of the bay. It was stunning, as we expected, but the real surprise is that there wasn't even a slight breeze, and we ended up taking much longer for our lunch break than usual. It was simply glorious, and of all the times I've been up here, this was by far the most pleasant.

We then headed to Lily Lake, where we took some time to lollygag, even though it hadn't been long since we stopped for lunch. It was just that kind of day: we were in no hurry to leave the magnificent woods on a day like today. I went over to the water and looked at the lily pads and discovered that they begin their journey from the bottom as soon as the sun begins to work on them, and they slowly make their way to the water's surface.

Underwater lilies making their way to the surface

In looking at previous posts about this particular hike, I notice that I never fail to take a picture of the beaver activity in the area around Lily Lake. Today was no exception, but this time those beavers have taken on the most ambitious cedar tree I could ever have imagined!

They will be working on this for awhile, I think. It's rather amazing, when you look at it and think of these small creatures gnawing this huge tree to the ground. Notice the small tree in the foreground that they have already taken down this year. I suspect this cedar tree will not be standing next time we visit the area.

Bob, Maggie, Linda, Mikey (peeking out), and me

Since I haven't been in any of the pictures for awhile, I took this one of myself by holding my camera out at the end of my arm. I was pleased with the way it turned out and had to share it. All in all, it was a simply extraordinary day, and now that I'm sitting here after having covered more than ten miles and 2,100 feet elevation gain and loss, my wine is tasting pretty darn good! Now I've got a day to recover before heading to Snohomish for my first 2013 Saturday with Linny and friends.
:-)