Two hour bike ride around town

My knee hurts for about a week after I am done hiking and then it feels better.  I wanted to get some exercise this weekend but I did not want to make my knee flare up again so I decided to go for a bike ride instead of hiking.  I have pilates tomorrow so I did not want over do it either.  I ended biking about 13 miles around town, I gained about 200 feet in elevation plus some ups and downs and I my average moving speed was 6.8 MPH.

I feel good after my bike ride.  My thighs are pleasantly tired and I got a nice mental break from my house and my kids.   My knee feels a lot better than it feels when I have hiked the same distance.  Maybe, if I spend the next two weeks biking, (and doing pilates and yoga)  instead of hiking my knee will get better.

A nice thing about biking is that I did not have burn any gas to get the the starting point, since the starting point was my driveway, but I got to go a lot further and see a lot more than I would have seen if I had started a hike from my driveway.   Also biking is a more intense workout, so I get the same amount of exercise in less time.  That means my house is less trashed when I get home and I have more time in the day to do other things.  The worst thing about biking is having to breath in auto exhaust and the risk of crashing.   It was a bicycle crash that weakened my ankle to the point that I had to go to physical therapy.

Even though I was surrounded by people and cars, I felt like I got more solitude than I get when I hike on a busy trail.  I don't have to interact much with the people around me when I am biking where I seem to have to interact a lot with the folks I pass when I am hiking.  One risk when biking is that people will yell nasty things out their car windows, I've had this happen a lot in the past, but luckily it does not happen to me as much now that I am older and apparently less attractive to bullies and living in a less urban area.

I can take some solace in the fact that even if I can't hike, I can still bike.  Biking is easier on my knees and there is no chance of my hurting my ankle, unless I crash.

13 miles
200 feet elevation gain

Big Creek

I went up Big Creek today. I wanted to take it a bit easy again because I have to do Pilates in class tomorrow. Today my ankle did not flop over at all! But my knee hurts. I wish I knew what was wrong with my knee. I don’t think its bad enough for a doctor to diagnose, so I’ll keep plodding along until it either gets better or gets bad enough to require medical attention. I’m really feeling my age this year, no doubt about it, I’m not going to live forever…

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches,
and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
-John Muir

I got off to a late start so I could let my husband sleep in a bit. I hit the trail at about noon. My average moving speed going uphill was 2.3 MPH. My average moving speed for the entire hike was 2.6 MPH. I took it real slow hiking back down so I could protect my ankle. The strategy worked. My ankle did not flop over at all. I ate my lunch at the overlook as usual and I headed back down the trail at 2pm. I did spent about ten minutes trying to meditate and relax before I hiked back. One of the classes I am taking this quarter requires me to meditate for 20 minutes a day.

Lunch Time

There were more people on the trail than I would have liked, but that’s the price for hiking a popular trail on the weekends. One of the other hikers on the trail really did not like dogs and my dog felt the same way about him. My dog was on leash when we met up with that hiker. That hiker was hating on dogs because he had a bad experience several off leash dogs earlier in the day. The hiker was glad that Patches was on a leash, but he was still hating on dogs and Patches could tell, so she barked at him. It is not normal for Patches to bark at other hikers, in fact this might have been the first time she has ever barked at another hiker. I don’t remember her ever barking at other hikers before.

I did not let Patches her off leash for much of this hike, due to the amount of other people on the trail. When I did let her off leash, I made her walk behind me. I did not know that Patches had been trained to heel off leash! But she did it so well today, that I am certain someone trained her to do it in the past. She was five years old when I got her and I don’t know much of her history.

The only snow on the trail was on this old logging grade

The trail was mostly free of snow all the way to the lookout but some hikers that had gone higher said there was a lot of snow near the lower Ellinor trailhead. I really wanted to hike up there and take a look, but I forced myself to turn around at the overlook due to having to do Pilates tomorrow.

I ate two poptarts for breakfast 400 calories, and comsumed about 800 calories worth of terra chips and one cup of tea with milk and sugar, on the hike.  I hope I lost some weight today.

7 miles
1,700 feet elevation gain
Average Moving Speed 2.6 MPH

Mystery Mushrooms, I also saw winter chanterelles today

Track log and Elevation Profile

This used to be my water source.  Something must have changed up stream,
It should have been running good today with all the recent snow melt and rain.

Geocaching adventure gone slightly wrong

This was to be a short hike with a lot of driving in the National Forest.

 We were going for a geocache near Spider Lake but we got the Tundra stuck in the snow instead. Some locals gave us a ride out of the woods. Once we got back to my house we headed back out to Spider lake in the fading light with a convoy of both my Jeep Apache and Jeep wrangler with a winch.

The plan was to hook the wrangler to the stuck truck with a tow strap and if need be hook my Jeep to the wrangler via the winch. The Wranger is light and we were unsure if it could tow a Tundra through two feet of snow. Hooking the winch to my heavy Jeep Apache would have solved the weight problem. But we did not need to use the winch after all. Still, it was good to have a second vehicle out there in case the wrangler got stuck, we did not want to take any risks, since we had a 15 month old baby with us!

We were able to tow the truck out of the snow and then we bid farewell to the Jeep Wrangler and the baby, while we went after the cache in the dark.  We got first to find!

truck is free and now we are ready get that first to find

Waterfall at night.  It was too dark to see this without the camera flash

Frisbee'r goes for the cache while I stay low to gaurd my ankle

Just another day in paradise!

About one mile RT with about 300 feet elevation gain.
My ankle was fine in spite of the snow and in spite of my lack of trekking poles.

More Geocaching Adventures

This was to be a short hike with a lot of driving in the National Forest.

 We were going for a geocache near Spider Lake but we got the Tundra stuck in the snow instead. Some locals gave us a ride out of the woods. Once we got back to my house we headed back out to Spider lake in a convoy with both my Jeep and a Jeep wrangler with a winch.

The plan was to hook the wrangler to the stuck truck with a tow strap and if need be hook my Jeep to the wrangler via the winch. The Wranger is light and we were unsure if it could tow a Tundra through two feet of snow. Hooking the winch to my Jeep Apache would have solved the weight problem. But we did not need to use the winch after all.  Still, it was good to have a second vehicle out there in case the wrangler got stuck, we did not want to take any risks since we had a 15 month old baby with us!

We were able to tow the truck out of the snow then we bid farewell to the Jeep Wrangler and the baby, while we went after the cache in the dark.  We got first to find!  

Frisbee's truck is free and now we are ready get that first to find

Waterfall at night.  It was too dark to see this without the camera flash

Frisbee'r goes for the cache while I stay low to gaurd my ankle

Just another day in paradise!

About one mile RT with about 300 feet elevation gain.
My ankle was fine in spite of the snow and in spite of my lack of trekking poles.

Mount Walker, second post after start of class

Free Hop Diggity Brand Beer

The plan today was to take it a bit easy and do Lena Lake in the pouring rain. But there was too much snow on the road to Lena, so I went for Mount Walker instead. The sun was shining on Mount Walker and the views were grand, I wish I had brought my big camera with me. I brought my point and shoot because I was expecting rain and it was raining hard everywhere, everywhere except for Mount Walker. Mount Walker is in Quilcene and it catches a bit of the Sequim rain shadow.

As usual with Mount Walker, there were a lot of other people and their dogs on the trail, but it was not too crowded and I got a little bit of a work out and some solitude. The hike was only 5 miles, but I gained 2,000 feet in the first two miles.

My ankle was good today, it did not flop over at all, but it did slide forward once. But even when it slid forward, it only hurt about ¼ as much as usual and it does not hurt at all now. My ankle must be getting stronger.

My left knee hurts a bit, I don’t know what is wrong with it, and it started hurting when I was driving to Albany. I thought that getting in and out of my car was the source of the pain and my knee did get better after I got home from that trip, but it’s still not 100%. Yeah, I guess I’m well into my 40’s now, my knees hurt and I’m farsighted. I am thankful for every hike that my body is able to take me on. I hope I can keep hiking well into my 80’s. I suppose that once I hit my late 60’s I should stop hiking solo, if I can still hike at all.

Anyway, the views at the top were nice and it was not too cold up there, so I was able to stay on the top and meditate for a while. I also walked over to the other view point before I headed back down. When I got back down to the trail head I accidentally drove off with my SPOT on my car, so I had to drive back about 1 mile to retrieve it. I found it laying in the snow,  it was just fine.

On the way home I stopped at Triton cove to use the facilities and found free beer there. YES I SAID FREE BEER!!!!. This is the second free beer that I have found this month!!! I sure have a knack for finding free beer, I guess the universe wants me to drink beer and who am I to argue with the Universe?  This time the brand is “Hop Diggity” and it is from the Port Townsend Brewing Company.  It cost $4.45 a bottle and I found two bottles of it.

5.9  miles with 2,000 feet elevation gain
Average moving speed only 2.3 miles per hour (that could be why my ankle did better)

The Olympics

Mount Constance

Sunshine!

pano from the viewpoint

The Corolla at the trailhead

My track log on google earth

Dosewallips Road Walk - first part of class exercise journal

01/09/2010

I decided to do the Dose (that rhymes with rosy) road walk today. I did not want to work too hard and be too sore in class on Monday, but I wanted to get enough exercise to maintain my level of conditioning, so I chose the Dose road walk.

I drove my Jeep even though I remember the road being smooth the last time I was up there. I had two reasons to take my jeep, we had a rain on snow event very recently, so the road could have been damaged and snow was forecast for the evening. My Jeep has snow tires and does well in the snow, so I took my Jeep in spite of its poor fuel economy.

I started my hike at about 10 am. There was no snow at the “trailhead” so I decided to leave my snowshoes in the jeep. I was worried that there would be enough snow to keep me from making my goal of the old Dose Car Campground, but I hate carrying snow shoes on my back, so I left them behind.

I made the right choice, there was some snow on the way in, but it was a nice crusty snow. The snow was just soft enough to steal some of my energy on the way up and to absorb some of the shock on the way back down. I slowed down to eat ate a banana about 4 miles into my hike.
At the 5.5 mile point I brewed tea and ate my lunch of two cold grill cheese sandwiches and a half frozen orange. I thawed the orange a bit on the lid of my tea pot before I ate it. There was about one foot of snow and compact ice my picnic table at the campground. Yes, it was very cold at my lunch spot, so I only stayed for about 45 minutes.

My weak ankle was just fine until I after lunch. After lunch I was in a good mood, ok I had hikers high and maybe was hiking too fast, my ankle went over 3-4 times to the outside and once to the inside, but it only hurt the time it went over to the inside. I’m still worried about my ankle but I have decided to ignore it until it either heals or gets so bad I can’t ignore it. Physical therapy helped a lot but I’m still having issues.

For the last 4 miles of the hike my ankle did not flop over at all. It was just that first mile after lunch that gave me problems. I made a point of stretching my calf muscles after lunch, so I didn’t really think that tightness was the problem. But now I think that maybe I was just a little bit tight and perhaps hiking too fast.

It started to snow while I was hiking out and the scene was very pretty. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera today, so I have no pictures.

I’ll try to paint a picture with words. On the way out I marveled at the maple trees have shed their fragile leaves, revealing their sturdy moss covered frames. The luxuriant drapes of moss were lightly coated with fine covering of powdered sugar snow.

Ok that's that, if you want to see more look at he pictures I took the other times I blogged this. Here is a compilation of pictures of the area from other hikes.



While on my way out I ate 1/3 of a Luna bar and gave the rest to my dog. I get migraines if I eat too many Luna bars. I assume they have hidden MSG in them, “natural flavors” is one of the ingredients and is a legal word for MSG in food labels and MSG gives me migraines. I also ate a half frozen “blackberry” pie during the last mile of my hike.

About an inch of snow fell on the trail while I was hiking in. The extra inch of snow on my way out was welcome, because it aided my traction on this otherwise ice coated road. Just before I reached my jeep and giant raven lifted up out of the woods and flew into the sky. There was a little bit of snow at the trail head when I reached it, but none of it had stuck to my Jeep. Tire tracks in the snow revealed that several cars had come and gone while my Jeep was parked.

The Dosewallips washout was actively falling into the river near my parking spot. When I first heard the noise of rocks falling off the hill I thought it was a tree falling, but then I decided it was elk running in the river. That makes sense, because the noise I heard started in the woods and ended at the river. The noise was the sound of rocks rolling down the hill and falling into the river.

I only saw three other people on the road; they were all together and were only about one mile in. Just as I was getting ready to leave my parking spot two cars rolled in, so I guess I picked a good time to leave. I’m afraid that my dog is starting to show her age, I had to help her get up onto the floorboard of the Jeep at the end of the hike. She seemed agile enough while she was hiking though.

Now I’m home and my ankle feels fine, but my legs are sore and both of my knees hurt. I expect that I will be a bit stiff and sore in the morning.

Other times I have blogged this hike


Jan 29, 2010
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006

I also carried my then 12 month old the entire way on my back (after one hell of an argument with my husband) sometime in 2005, but before I started blogging. That may have been my favorite trip.



11 miles with
1,100 feet elevation gain

Green Mountain Cache Machine

Seattle from the summit of Green Mountain 12X zoom

My goodness what a stressful few weeks we are having. My husband has been diagnosed with severe emphysema and started oxygen this week. My husband is also just one write up away from losing both his job and his health insurance. My puppy broke her leg and my uncle has been diagnosed with metastasized prostate cancer in his brain. Then there was the stress of Christmas.. sigh....

It felt good to get out hiking this week and spend some time with a really nice person. They had a cache machine event on the Tahuya peninsula and I was invited to join. The Tahuya peninsula holds many memories for me, some wonderful, some unspeakable. I generally avoid the place, but today I went there anyway to hopefully make some new good memories out there.

logs a cache

I was picked up at 10 am and off we went. We only did two of the cache machine caches and then we headed for Green Mountain. First we went for the summit cache. I had searched for that cache before and not found it but today we found it.

My geodaching partner has excellent navigation skills and he led us around in a 8 mile circle around Green Mountain where we picked up several geocaches. This was his first time on Green Mountain and I thought I would be doing the guiding! It was nice to be able to just follow him around and not have to think too much. The last cache we grabbed was "bats in the belfry", I'm glad to have finally found the bats in the belfry cache and I'm so glad it was not in the cave, as the cave had about a foot of water in it. We got sundowned on the way out but we both had good headlamps and we were able to navigate the last 1.5 miles on unknown trails to get back down to the truck.  Oh my what an adventure we had up there.

Deep water in the scary tin mine at bats in the belfry cache

My ankle flopped over twice but did not hurt either time, my burned foot gave me no trouble at all. After the hike we went to the post cache machine dinner event but we got there late and only a few geocachers were left. The folks who did the cache machine got up to 60 caches! Frisbee and I only got 6 caches but we got away from the crowds.

After dinner,  we went to my  home and my husband brewed my geocaching partner "the best cup of tea" he has ever had in his life. Amazingly the house was clean and nothing had been destroyed while I was gone.

8 miles with about 1,400 feet total elevation gain.

A nice loop loaded with geocaches

our up and down route