Skokmish River Trail

My house was robbed while I was on this hike, my drone and other things were stolen.  My kid was home sleeping at the time and never noticed it.   This hike was on a Wednesday, I noticed my stuff missing on Friday.  I've never had a car broken into at a trail head but it has happened a few times at my house and now my house has been robbed.  My stuff is safer at a trailhead.

A leg stretcher that left me tired, I must be out of shape.  Only 7 miles with a little elevation gain.  The hot weather did not help.  I really don't like the heat.

Fall berries and mushrooms are out!  So far this is a great mushroom year.  I got some chanterelles  and some chicken of the woods.  I never normally get chanterelles on this trail, so this really is a good mushroom year.

I saw the biggest red huckleberries ever and there were a lot of the high bush blueberries.  The blueberries were very sour though, so I did not enjoy eating them.

Lunch was a cold grill cheese sandwich with pepperoncini slices on it and a raw but very ripe plantain and a cup of coffee.

Sage had a bag of dogfood that looks like hamburger, that is her special high calorie hiking treat food.  I seemed to have her trained to lay down and wait for her food too.  She was in the habit of barking loudly and incessantly the moment I sat down for lunch.  I started waiting to giver her food until after she had laid down and shut up.  It worked, on both breaks she just laid down without any barking and just a bit of whining, so she got to have her lunch fast.

Sage got her hair cut this week, so she was a bit more comfortable in the heat, but she started shivering during lunch.

During lunch I dug out my key chain and wondered if these two people have any right to be on my key chain.  They both treated me very badly and then abandoned me early due to their legal drug habits, one alcohol the other tobacco.  I'm well into an anger cycle in my grief and it feels good to not be afraid to be angry.   I've been too afraid of my mother to allow myself to feel anger, what if she harms me from the grave or something.  I was not as scared of my husband because he was always frail.  I was still afraid of his yelling and arguing, but I was not too physically intimidated by him.

My new love treats me so much better, the way I deserve to be treated and that is actually fueling some of my anger.   How refreshing and eye opening it is to be treated the way I deserve to be treated.  It's like I've had to wait all my life just to be treated like a human.  Maybe I just needed to go over to the other side all this time.


I forgot to pack a camera but the I remembered that I had one in my car, my old D90 equipped with a nifty fifty.  Not my first choice for a hiking lens, but it got the job done anyway and it did not weigh much.

7 miles 700 feet elevation gain

My wedding ring is on my little finger here.  When my hands swell up from hiking I move it to my little finger.
If I had not worn it on this hike it would have been stolen as my entire jewelry box was taken.