Raptor Ridge from Arroyo Park

Hikers making our way through downed trees

We were nine today, which again amazed me. Since it rained hard all night long and the weather forecast was for more of the same, with a little break here and there, I wondered who in the world would be as crazy as me to join Al for today's hike in the Chuckanuts. It's our usual stomping grounds, nothing spectacular, and with rain much more likely than not: I'm not the only crazy person!

Diane in front of Chuckanut Falls

As we started out, all ready for the rain, some stray raindrops fell... and then stopped. I noted that the first hour of our hike was dry, as we made our way to Chuckanut Falls, where we figured there would be lots of water since we've had so much rain. We were right.

Tree, Chuckanut Falls, Kirk

I am always enchanted with the greenery we have here in the Pacific Northwest, and I asked Kirk to pose for me to make the picture even better. Notice how light it seems? Well, the sun actually came out, and the rain stayed away! We made it to Raptor Ridge, but even though there was no rain, it was extremely windy, and nobody was willing to stay for long.

Raptor Ridge

The clouds were low at this time, but they still held their moisture. We marveled at our good fortune and went to Madrone Crest for lunch. The weather was about the same as this, so I won't bother to add any more pictures of it. However, to get to Raptor Ridge, we took a new trail, the Huckleberry Trail, which is still in progress but seemed pretty nice to us. There is a viewpoint from the old part of the trail, which I have shown before.

Huckleberry viewpoint

At lunchtime I was moaning about my finger, which still hurts, and once Al took a look at it, he insisted that I see a doctor. Steve said that he never wants to hear a doctor say to him, "well, if you would only have come in sooner." So right then and there I called my doctor's office and have an appointment to see him (actually a physician's assistant) in an hour. I felt a bit sheepish saying it was for an infected hangnail, but they wanted to see me today. I'll keep you posted.

We hiked nine-and-a-half miles, going up and down around 2,300 feet, so it was a pretty good workout for all of us. When we were only a quarter mile from our cars, the rain started, hard and steady! It only made us laugh, because we were feeling incredibly lucky! A game we played as we stood in the parking lot, getting drenched, was to guess how far and how high we went. I vastly underestimated the number, by two miles, while one other overestimated it, but not by much. It was a very good day, and now I'm off to the doctor to have my paronychia examined, otherwise known as a hangnail.
:-)