Mother's Day May 9, 2010


My mother's day present was a hike. We went up Rattlesnake Ledge, which is in the foothills of the Cascades. Maeve's longest hike yet, 4 miles round trip and about 1100 feet elevation gain. The way up was no problem, and although the last bit of coming down she was tired, she walked it all. We were out there last summer around Memorial Day with the cousins, and we didn't even get halfway up before descending to play in the lake. This is the limit of what Maeve can do - now I need to find more 3-4 mile hikes with 1000+ feet of elevation gain. Maybe by the end of the summer we'll do Little Si.

Rattlesnake Ledge is less than an hour from Seattle and was super-crowded. I'm still not used to the hoards that go hiking here. Likely hikes for us (short, not to steep, close to Seattle) are going to be super-crowded. By the time the kids are bigger, I'm sure we'll be ready to get a little farther from home to escape the crowds and dogs and hang out in quieter country.

Anyway, the day was beautiful, the kids were good, and the woods were variable so we had tons of stuff to look at and talk about with Maeve. She identifies snags, cut trees where you can count rings, mushrooms, ferns with and without fiddleheads, conifers, deciduous trees, pine cones, and anything else we can think of to keep her interested. This time we didn't even play hide and seek, which would have been a bit difficult since the trail was crowded and there were quite a few dogs illegally off-leash. Silas slept for an hour on the way down in the backpack. Yay!

The photo is part of the view from the ledge, which has 270 degree views of the Snoqualmie valley and Cascades. Lovely.