On the one hand, Derek, Jill and Finley definitely live in a city, the city of Snoqualmie. It has its own Champions Tour event (the Boeing Classic), a nice downtown, an older section of town with a railroad and on and on.
It is civilization.
But the view from their balcony shows how close they are to the Issaquah Alps, although yesterday the best view was obscured by the morning marine layer. You can see a corner of a mountain in this view:
Saturday the 30th we had time constraints so all we did was walk out his door about 7am and did an almost 3 hour hike. There are so many trails in their neighborhood that it may be tough to choose a route, just like it can be hard to pick your food from a crowded menu.
The views are excellent no matter where you turn:
Pretty nice, eh?
We figure we did about 8.5 miles yesterday in about 2 hours and 45 minutes. We figured this was a training exercise, so instead of pacing ourselves on the steep portions we just powered ahead the entire way.
It was fun.
And we planned our next two hikes.
Next Thursday, June 4, we are going to honor the fact that the new baby’s birth is imminent and that Derek sure needs to be accessible if Jill starts going into labor, so we are “just” going to do another version of the Mount Washington hike. This time we will, at some point, do the Great Wall trail, but explore a new trail by hiking the Change Creek trail that intersects the Great Wall.
And next Saturday, June 6, we are planning a 31-mile Tiger Mountain/12 peak trek. At no point will we be too terribly far from the car so it is doable within the exciting baby-watch embrace.
UPDATE 6/1: Derek informs me that yesterday he and Finley and some of her Girl Scout pals hiked 4 miles on Cougar Mountain, with 1,200 feet of elevation gain, and Fin hiked every step! Kudos to Fin for a great performance. She may earn a nice reward if she can join us to do Cedar Butte which is, come to think of it, probably easier than what she did on Cougar.