A change in plans

Our group today (plus me)

When we met at the Senior Center to talk about the schedule, which had us heading up Blanchard Mountain and the British Army trail, Al showed us a picture sent to him by a fellow hiker showing lots and lots of snow at Lily Lake, which would have been our destination on that hike. Nope, let's not go there, we decided. Instead, we went to Chuckanut Ridge. Eleven of us spent the day in sun and clouds, cool but without any rain or snow, except a tiny bit of the white stuff on the trail.

Discussing our options

It was a nice day, and once we reached the ridge, we expected a better view than the one we received, since clouds covered the mountains, but the sun felt so good we decided to go ahead and walk farther along the ridge.

MaryLou amidst the signs

Once we got to this junction, it was still too early for lunch, and we didn't really want to go too much farther along the ridge, because from this point on it becomes much more difficult, with lots of ups and downs and would make our hike longer than we'd like. So, we only went a short distance past this point before we turned around and looked for a place to have lunch.

It's a long way down

This was the view from my lunch spot. We found as much sun as we could as we spent a short time enjoying our lunch before heading back down. We decided we'd also stop at Chuckanut Falls on our way back.

Oyster shells

Someone had decorated this tree with some oyster shells, for some reason we didn't know, but they were pretty and reminded me that soon we'll be having lots of flowers decorating our walks. Not today, though; we smiled at the shells and left them alone.

Jim, Frank, Sue, Chris, LouAnn, me, MaryLou, Owen

Melanie took this picture at Chuckanut Falls, while Al stayed up at the trail and skipped the side trip. This nice little overlook of the falls is downhill and added somewhere around an additional mile to the hike.

Chuckanut Falls

Then we had to walk back up to join Al and, eventually, the Hemlock trail. We meandered down the trail, making somewhere around 8 miles total, with some elevation gain, around 2,000 feet, I think.

Our trail back to the cars

It was a lovely day, and everyone enjoyed themselves, I believe. We were not hampered by the weather and it was nice to see a couple of faces I'd missed having around, like Jim (he's back from travels and cruises) and Owen (usually hikes with the other group). Now I'm home and feeling glad to have had another wonderful day with the Trailblazers.
:-)