Fragrance Lake loop hike

 

Our group today (I took the picture)

We are limited to groups of five in our hikes, and this was today's group. Dave and Joy Church (right) are a married couple, so they might actually count as one instead of two, but we decided it was important to stay within the Covid boundaries. Terry and Melanie and I made up the rest. We masked up when we saw any other people on the trail, kept our distance from one another, and set out from the Lost Lake trailhead to hike up to Fragrance Lake to start our hike.

A beautiful old cedar tree

There are so many really magnificent trees on the two-mile trail to Fragrance Lake, and today this one caught my eye. We also had many fern forests to enjoy as we made our way up to the lake.

Fragrance Lake

It was another one of those days when the lake was smooth as glass, with the reflection of the trees almost exactly the same as the trees themselves. You could probably turn this photo upside down and not know for sure which side is really up. The bare branch in the foreground gives it away, though. 

The Two Dollar trail

Then we went over to the Two Dollar trail to head back down to the service road. This is one of my favorite trails, and no I don't know how it got its name: it's 1.7 miles from its start to the lake. Maybe Two Dollar sounds a little better than One Point Seven?

Melanie took this one

Before we started down the trail, Melanie took this of us changing our gear to be more comfortable. For some reason it got a little colder on this side of the lake. I am putting my jacket back on before hiking any further. 

A little fog

As we started our descent, the fog moved in and gave me a bit of a chill. I was glad I had put on my coat again, but as we kept going, we warmed up considerably. We ran into three other Senior Trailblazers while on the hike (they went much further than we did) and were almost back to their cars. We, however, had to hike another couple of miles on the service road and the Interurban trail to get back to the parking lot and our cars. By the time we finished, we had gone somewhere around seven miles and around 1,100 feet up and down.

I didn't enjoy the road part very much, because the surface is harder on my knees and hips, which apparently noticed that I recently had a birthday and am expected to get more decrepit as I age. However, once we got to the cars, Melanie slipped me some ibuprofen and turned on the seat warmer for the ride back. By the time we reached our homes, I was feeling fit as a fiddlehead fern. It was another wonderful day in the forest without any of the wet stuff (well, the fog was a little damp), but you know what I mean! 

:-)