Length: 5.6 miles
Elevation Gain: 800 feet

My little brother came to visit this past weekend, and to best show him my favorite local Super Dangerous Volcano That Will One Day Awaken & Kill Us All, we decided to hike to the Fremont Lookout in Mount Rainier National Park. My friend Nicole came with us, and we all got the hell out of Seattle bright and early Sunday morning.

The Fremont Lookout is the highest lookout in the park at 7,000 feet. But because you begin the hike at the Sunrise Visitor Center, which is already pretty high up, the elevation gain is easy to handle. In fact, the beginning climb from the parking lot to the trail junction was the most difficult part, and even that was most likely because we went straight from a two-hour car ride to legging it. Even my brother, who has never hiked before, successfully completed this without issue in his running shoes.

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Length: 2 miles
Gain: none

I liked this place so much that I went here twice in one week! It’s a beautiful little slice of estuary life, and I love going here to see shorebirds. I think the best time to visit if you’d like to see birds is as close to sunrise or sunset as possible — I drove here after work from Seattle to see the sun set, and the trees near the visitor center’s boardwalk area were just teeming with birdsong. I am a very subpar birder, though, so I didn’t see too many of the birds, though I certainly did hear them. The ones I was able to identify were: dark-eyed juncos, black-capped chickadees, barn swallows, and Western wood-peewees. But most impressively (to me), an American bittern! He caught a tiny silvery fish and everything.

The boardwalk paths around the visitor center are in good repair, and the shades provide plenty of shade. But the real treat is the new boardwalk that takes you out over the estuary. To most easily get to it, enter the trail to the left of the visitor center and follow the boardwalk until you get to a T-junction past the “Twin Barns.” Go left to hug your way around the barns, and you’ll eventually get to a spot where the boardwalk meets a gravel path. Go onto the gravel path to leave the shade of the trees and follow the path it as it swings out towards the water. You’ll see the new boardwalk in the distance ahead of you.

As you walk further out on the new boardwalk towards the Puget Sound viewing area, look to your right and on a clear day you’ll see Mount Rainier! Maybe you’ll also see the Improbable Seagull Who Can Stand On Water — tell him I said “‘sup.”

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Length: 2.75 miles
Elevation Gain: 10 feet, so practically none

I don’t know what I was expecting when I visited the Mima Mounds after hanging out at the Billy Frank Nisqually Wildlife Refuge (it’s only a 30-minute drive from one to the other), and maybe something is just deeply wrong with me, but I found the mounds completely underwhelming. Perhaps if I had come when the wildflower show was still going strong, my opinion would be different. But I came in late July when all the color was gone from the mounds, aside from the endless sandy gold of the grass.

The mounds are also next to a shooting range, or at least so close to one that during the entire time I was there, I could hear endless BLAM!BLAM!BLAM! even when I rambled to the far end of the trail. It certainly didn’t add to the experience, that’s for sure.

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Length: 2.6 miles
Elevation Gain: 850 feet

I did this hike on a whim. At approximately noon yesterday, I realized that the weather forecast for the rest of the week, the entire weekend, and most of next week would be rain, rain, and more rain. So much rain we all might grow gills, I mean, it’s anyone’s call at this point.

I was seized by a sudden need to get one more outdoor jaunt in while the weather permitted, so after work, I ran home, threw my hiking pack together (water, flashlight, sweater, 75 cameras — you know, the usual), and drove through rush hour traffic to get to the trailhead for the Heybrook Lookout. Thank goodness for late summer sunsets.

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Length: 2 miles
Elevation Gain: 400 feet

My friend Jessica was in town this past week, and because Houston isn’t exactly known for splendid mountain views, lush forests, and gushing waterfalls, we decided to go for a ramble for all three of those things.

Franklin Falls is one of the easiest hikes I’ve done, and because it’s pretty tame and short, it’s also quite popular. Luckily, we were able to go on a weekday because I took the day off work, which meant the trail was far less crowded than I imagine it’d be during the weekend.

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Length: 6 miles
Elevation Gain: ???

My friend Nicole and I went to Deception Pass State Park yesterday, though we definitely did not strictly do any of the trails on the WTA website and just rambled around a bunch of random trails and along the beaches instead. This was my first time at this park, and also my first time on Whidbey Island! Bring your Discover pass.

First, a tip: your phone will think you’re in Canada when you’re here and begin roaming. Put that phone on airplane mode or else this will happen —

PHONE: we’re in Canada!
ME: we’re not in Canada
PHONE: pretty sure this is Canada
ME: it’s not, trust me
PHONE: …nah, this is Canada! -roams for signal, drains a previously 50% full battery in 36 seconds, dies-

Thank goodness I happen to always carry at least two additional cameras on my person on any given hike (I am that person you see on the trails, it’s true).

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Length: 7-ish miles, roundtrip (not 8 like the WTA site says)
Elevation Gain: 1,750 ft

The Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area is in Kittitas, 2.5 hours outside of Seattle. I know. Whiskey Dick? It gets its name from Whiskey Dick Mountain, but how the mountain got that name, I… don’t know the backstory. Maybe there is none. Maybe it was named by a 13-year-old boy who thought himself quite hilarious.

The drive was a breeze — I was on paved road the entire way (I-90 to small town streets), which is important because I drive a very not-for-offroading sedan. Once I was inside the Wild Horse Solar & Wind Facility (which is where the wildlife area is located), I got my recreation pass from the main visitor’s building. Despite what the WTA website says, I didn’t need a Discover Pass to hike here.

A mile back down the same road is where the trail began. This was marked by a tiny stone with a plaque on it.

And I mean tiny.

This place was nothing like the green old growth forests of Western Washington, so I can imagine that some people might find it kind of boring. But I loved the tumbling hills of low sagebrush as far as the eye can see — it just made everything that much more vast, especially since I also hiked this on a clear, cloudless day. The sky went on forever.

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