Holiday party and hike

Intrepid hikers today

Believe it or not, this large group of Senior Trailblazers showed up to hike six miles along the Lake Whatcom shore (Hertz Trail) before our annual holiday party. It was wild and windy, blustery with buckets of rain falling earlier, but by the time we started out around the lake, the rain had lessened considerably. In fact, for a while it almost stopped. We were in the lee side of the wind, so although it was still blowing, we were not much inconvenienced by it.

Melanie's pretty blue braids

We had plenty of time to enjoy the trip out to the turnaround point, and as you can see from this picture of Melanie, it was quiet and relatively dry at this point. This is one of our favorite easy hikes, flat with a nice trail (which had plenty of puddles today), because we knew that at noon we would be meeting at Dianne's house for our annual holiday party.

Looking out at the lake

Before we turned around to walk the three miles back to the cars, we did notice that the wind was no longer making whitecaps on the lake, so the wind shouldn't continue to be much of a problem. We discussed the weather forecast and that everything was going right along with the forecasts.

Big crowd at Dianne's

Some went home to change clothes or freshen up, and I went back to the Senior Center to renew my membership for next year and also remove some of my rain gear and make myself more presentable. By the time I got there, it was hopping, with all three of our hiking groups bringing lots of food to Dianne's home (that's her, the one on the left of the three red ladies). Her beautiful home managed to accommodate around sixty of us! That's more than we've ever had.

Downstairs room

The entire place was overflowing with people and plenty of us found some room downstairs, where she had set up a spare table. Her home is incredibly comfortable and we were thrilled with her generosity to open it to all of us.

Desserts galore

And oh the food! We had tables groaning with every kind of dishes. This is the dessert table, but there were also lots of salads and quiche dishes, and it seemed impossible we could finish it all. We made a valiant effort. That pretty heart-decorated cake was made by Kirk, a flourless gluten-free chocolate cake, and I brought a piece home for later, since I couldn't find any more room in my stomach, but I still wanted it.

Hikers filling their plates

We partied on for several hours, and then finally made our goodbyes and went off to enjoy the rest of our day. It turned out to be a magnificent and bountiful party, with the best company in the whole world! Thank you, Dianne, for being a delightful hostess in the most splendid spirit of the season. Merry Christmas, everybody!
:-)