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