March 5th Morning Hike to My Secret/Favorite Spot!!!

It was wet and a little cold but I loved being out in it. In the one picture you can see the beaver lodge.

Bird-watching Alone in the Cold Fog

I drove out early Friday morning to Folsom Farm near the Hog/Fishtrap Lake complex to see what I could see. Luckily the blind I sat in kept me out of the wind from the south. The main entertainment was a pair of Pied Billed Grebes who would occasionally call and once performed their mating display. I also say many yellow-headed blackbirds, a widely spread out number of coots, a pair of mallards and heard the call of a flicker.

Hike Along Palouse Falls and Into Kahlotus Train Tunnel

This was from a couple of weekends ago. It was rainy, muddy and foggy in places but the Falls were stupendous!

4 Miles Along Rimrock

Yesterday morning's hike along Rimrock Drive (now part of Palisades Park) overlooking the city of Spokane before it got slushy.

An Unexpectedly Hard Hike

I started at 7:50 am near Spokane's Fish Hatchery. Instead of going past St. George's School the trail began to climb way up and around. I never realized the hill went up so high but I was certainly glad for my Micro Spikes and my Goretex hiking boots. The ground is covered with 5" of snow that had warmed up yesterday and melted a bit on top. It made for slightly more work. I explored up a drive path instead of heading downhill per the trail marker and it took me to some high power lines. Then I turned around and got back on the trail proper and it was all down hill to the NW corner of the school property. You had to take a left at that point and the trail was fairly flat, goes past some nice rock formations and then comes out along Rutter Parkway near the Painted Rocks area along the Little Spokane River. All told it was about 7 miles with 800' elevation gain and loss. It had started to snow once I had turned around. I saw many whitetail deer and a pair of ravens in a tree top talking to me, as always.

Fletcher Canyon near Las Vegas, NV

I did this early morning hike last October when I accompanied my wife for her conference. While she was locked up in classes, I was hitting the road towards Mt. Charleston then hiking up this dry canyon that has obviously seen its share of water in the past. It becomes a slot canyon at the turn around point. I suppose that it is possible to scramble up and over the blocking rock formations but I thought better of that. Very nice hike and very cool in the canyon proper; the walls are too steep and close together to allow sunlight to penetrate here.

First Hike With Mallory

Today is December 13th, 2014. We have had one cold spell this fall and now it is so warm that I heard tree frogs last night! Mallory wants to do more hiking so we started with this easy one over at Palisades Park just a few miles from our house at the top of Sunset Hill.