Life in Full Color

• Mar. 29, 2008 - Friday's hike on Blueberry Trail

Friday after some other plans fell through (because of weather

), the kids and I went hiking on a 3 mile hike on what is called the Blueberry Trail. Starting out I didn't really plan to do the whole hike. I thought we would just hike maybe to the top of the mountain and then back down.

The first part of the hike zig zags up the mountain.

Noah had fun pointing out some trees that he could remember and we took photos of a couple of interesting plants that we found.

This is running cedar.

This is a club moss. There are several but I am not sure which one this one is.... maybe shinning club-moss.

Noah never admitted to needing a rest but when winded always asked me if I needed a rest.

He is still relatively clean at this point. He wasn't by the end of the hike

Here are some views as we neared the top of the mountain.

When I worked at Wesley Woods (*cough* 12 years ago), we were just beginning to see the damage from the pine beetle. Now a blight is attacking the hemlocks. I can't imagine the further changes we will see to these mountains.

Down the other side of the mountain the trail takes us through a gorge (watershed). This is a very rugged part of the trail. Noah did very well. It got a little tiring that he was avoiding "the lava" as we made our way through. There are two small water falls/ cascades that we have to climb down to continue on our way. I didn't take pictures of these. I guess I was too busy getting a little boy and a small highly freaked out dog through this area to stop and document the hike at this point. Daisy (the dog) perked up after the water falls. I guess she felt that if she could make it through that she could make it through anything. The dog did not enjoy the travel through the gorge and was very happy when we stepped onto a real trail on the last leg of our hike.

Over all it was a good hike. I think it took us just a little over two hours to hike the trail. There wasn't much to stop and look at plant wise so that probably sped us up some.