July 1, 2012
We went for our first desert hike. We were in scrubby valleys (Robinson Canyon/Ainsley Canon) in L.T. Murray Wildlife area, less than 10 miles off I-90 at exit 101. It's just a 2 hour drive from Seattle. July 1 our summer hadn't hit yet and we went through rain and 50 degree weather on the way out. Past Snoqualmie Pass, the sky started clearing up, and ended up being a lovely day to the east of the Cascades, dry and about 10 degrees warmer than in Seattle. We walked up a couple valleys filled with grasses and scrub. I didn't get a good picture of it, but one side of each valley was wooded and the other was just grass or bare. These are valleys that elk and deer overwinter in and we saw parts of 2 elk skeletons as well as several spent shot-gun shells. However, we had the trail to ourselves - we saw one mountain biker on the trail and there was a couple camped at the trailhead with two horses who were riding, but we only saw them at the trailhead and got to pet the horses. Lovely. Now that the kids can stay happy over 90 minutes in the car, we'll start doing a lot more of these in Spring and Fall. 