The June 2008 issue of the Seattle Metropolitan magazine on page 70 used a picture that I took last summer while kayaking with my brother-in-law.  They used the photo to talk about kayaking around the San Juan Islands, but this photo is closer to Olympia in South Puget Sound in front of Ketron Island.  Oh well, still kind of cool to see a photo of mine used in a magazine I see in the checkout lines at my grocery store.  They found my photo on my Flickr page.

Here's the link to the original pic and one to a scan of the published photo.

I think the people that predict weather in the NW were in some part of some sort of conspiracy to keep everyone else indoors for the start of Memorial day weekend.  After checking the weather forecast for yesterday on Friday, I cancelled a planned day of sea kayaking with my brother and his girlfriend.  Both are new to the activivity and while a little rain and wind wouldn't bother me terribly, I wanted them to have a good time.  So with no plans for Saturday, I woke up to blue skies.  Another check of the weather report still showed possible thunderstorms for the afternoon.  I did some yard work and kept my daughter at home while my wife and son went out with some friends.  Realizing that the weather report was bogus, I made plans for some afternoon hiking.

After dropping off my daughter with my wife, I headed off to explore Taylor Mountain.  King County is still a relatively new owner and manager of this land.  It is Southeast of Tiger Mountain, on the other side of Hwy 18.  I parked at the south entrance off of 276th (Issaquah Hobart Rd.) and headed up the dirt road.  Not knowing what I'd find and quickly realizing this area has not had any signage put in place, I started marking points on my GPS.  After a couple miles I finally came to some trails off of the dirt road (which was gated so I couldn't drive up here).  King County Search and Rescue folks were out with their dogs for a training exercise.  Apparently I was the only non-S&R person hiking during this time.  After passing a couple searchers, they passed the word about a day hiker out that wasn't part of the exercise.  I guess I was confusing the dogs since they were looking for injured people who couldn't walk.  At least I knew I had help close at hand if I was injured or somehow wound up lost.

Being a new park, the trails are not all complete.  They have been kept up with help of locals and horse riders who have been using this area for years.  Other than having to hike in on a dirt road (I prefer single track trails), once on the trails the fine aroma of horse manure accompanies parts of the trails.  While enjoying wandering through the woods, I wasn't finding it to be a very interesting area.  There were lots of streams crossing through but much of the time I could only hear them and not see them.  I met some people on their horses and chatted about the area.  They told me the clear cut areas at one point were slated for estate home developments.  Some court battles ensued and the county was then able to buy the property.  There is still some privately held land in the middle of this park.  The 'inholders' have access to the roads so they can get to their home on this property.  That's not a bad place to live, surrounded by a park that will never be developed.

They recommended a view trail that I had passed on the way in.  I headed back to this trail and headed up the mountain through the clearcut.  I wish I'd come this way earlier.  Its narrower and appeared to be less used by those on horses.  It went up to a short peak with beautiful views.  I could look NW to Tiger Mountain or SE to Mt. Rainier and the cascades.  The trail appeared that it would head back down to the Road but it dead ended.  It looks like it eventually might, but not right now.  I could have followed the trail to the North, but I was running out of time.  I did find a geocache in the area to add to my list of finds at www.geocaching.com.  I headed back down the trail to the dirt road and home.  All and all, not a bad way to make up for inaccurate weather forecasts.  I uploaded my track from my GPS at home and it registered just shy of 7 miles of hiking.  Go to the link below for pics at Flickr:

Hiking - Taylor Mountian - a set on Flickr

 Live Maps route of Lake Union to Washington Park Arboretum

On June 16th, I had some family members in town for my brother's highschool graduation.  His graduation wasn't till 5:30pm so in the morning my Dad, Tayler (1/2 brother) and Jeremy (brother in law) headed up to Lake Union.  I brought my kayak along and they rented a double for my Dad and Taylor and a single for Jeremy from NWOC and we headed out.  I've paddled out to the Arboretum once before with my brother but didn't know the area very well so we ended up only seeing a small portion of the park.  This time we wound our way through its waterways, saw a couple of Blue Heron, a turtle and a couple of bald eagles.  The weather was nice except for the stiff wind that made us really work to get back across Lake Union to NWOC.

Click here for some pics of the short day trip.

I finally took my new kayak out for a real trip.  It did a great job.  The weather this afternoon turned out to be perfect.  I had hoped to get a full day in but after being on call overnight for my job, I needed to sleep in a bit.  Then my wife decided she wanted to hit up some stores down in Olympia instead of being stuck at home.  So by the time we packed up and I had her drop me off, it was 1pm before I was on the water.  But it there had been a morning fog that had stuck around till lunch time so this was fine.  By the time I was on the water, there was some high clouds but lots of blue sky and sunshine.  The temperature was warm enough I stripped off my spray jacket half way through my trip.  I went to the Nisqually Delta area where I'd paddled in borrowed Coho kayak 3 years ago.  Here's a link to a topo map of the area and here's a link to a local.live.com map of my trip with a few points and the approximate path added.

According to some tide charts I found here, the tide was coming in.  I had missed low tide by a few hours.  This was a good thing since with the tide out it exposes more mud flats and there's fewer places to paddle.  Also, had the tides been heading out while I was paddling over the mud flats and I wasn't paying attention, I could have stranded myself and been stuck in mud till the tide came back in.  So I left Luhr beach at 1pm and just lazily paddled across McAllister creek towards the Nisqually mud flats.  The Nisqually Delta is of course a delta.  Silt and soil has been building up for centuries.  The dry soil that currently exists used to be underwater and most likely the mud flats that are covered up by the tides will also rise up and be dry land.  At least that's my understanding of it.  So I found myself in water ranging from a few feet deep to 6 inches deep above the mud.  I was constantly having to find a new route as I would run into sections too shallow for my kayak to go over.  This area is a wildlife refuge and it allowed for some great photo opportunities.  I was at least 200 yards from actual dry land even though in most of the areas I could have gotten out and walked (albeit in mud up to my ankles probably).  And probably another 100 yards from me out towards the sound birds were still standing up in the shallow waters.  That may give you some ideas as to the size of these mud flats.  I was able to get some good pics of Blue Herons which were out in plenty.  There was also ducks, Canadian geese flying overhead, seagulls and at one point I spotted a bald eagle with a small fish in its talons heading to a tree near Luhr beach.

I was in the middle of the mud flats and I was approaching what I thought was a sandbar above the water with a mass of driftwood lying on it when the driftwood started flopping around a bit.  I pulled out my binoculars for a close up look and realized it was about a dozen harbor seals sunning themselves.  I approached as quietly as I could but still managed to scare a few from the exposed mud back into the water.  But several of them weren't as intimidated and posed for some pictures.  It was surreal to drift there with seals staring at me from their little piece of dry land and have others nearby poking their head out of the water just enough to keep an eye on me.  After that I headed towards the shoreline on the east side of the mud flats.  I wanted to get out to take some pictures, stretch my legs and eat a little.  As I was heading towards the shoreline I crossed paths with some duck hunters in a small zodiac style raft motoring their way back to the boat launch.  We waved at each other.  I thought about stopping them to ask if anyone else was out hunting that I should be aware of but I figured that I was in a bright yellow PFD and spray jacket in a bright red kayak.  I'd be easy enough to spot.  I was about 100 yards or so out from the shore when I heard several gunshots ring out from the spot of land I was headed towards.  While I wasn't frightened I was a bit disturbed by this.  I pulled out my binoculars and picked out on the shore the distinct lines of a small hunting boat with camo covered figures aboard.  I couldn't seen enough detail though to see what they were doing.  There's was a few additional shots.  As far as I can figure, I was probably about to scare off several ducks in the area and they were either warning me that they were there and wanted to be left alone or trying to get their targets before I scared them off.

It was a bit annoying and unnerving to feel like I was being shot at but I knew that either way, I didn't want to disturb them anymore.  I scoped out the beach to the north and took a 45 degree turn towards a portion of the shoreline that appeared to be empty.  I found a nice spot and pull my boat up onto the barnacle covered rocks, adding some scratches to the hull of my boat, and had a nice 30 minute break.  While waiting, I had to pull my boat up higher onto shore a few more times as the tide rose about a foot while I was there.  I took several pictures, ate some food I had brought along and just enjoyed the view.  It is about 2.5 miles from Luhr beach to the point where I was taking my break.  I'd taken about 1.5 hours to get there since I'd had to pick my way through the shallow water and had stopped to take a few pictures on the way over.  It wasn't a very quiet location since the beach was just below some railroad tracks that were up on the hill about 20 yards from the edge of the water.  A few military choppers also were making their way overhead and occasionally there was some gunfire from the duck hunters.  But the scenery made up for it. 

At 3pm I headed back.  The tide had come in considerably so I didn't have to worry about getting stuck on any mud flats and I headed straight towards Luhr beach.  I found 3 of the harbor seals perched on some partially submerged logs that were providing a somewhat horizontal surface for them to perch themselves on.  I took a few more pictures.  It took me around 40 minutes to get back to Luhr beach.  Shanda wasn't back yet from shopping and so I called her so she knew it was time to head over to pick me up.  I paddled up McAllister creek a little and realized that when I had started paddling some clouds had been blocking a view of the top half of Mt. Rainer over the tree line on the east side of the delta.  The water was glass on the creek.  It was a great ending to the afternoon.  The weather had been great with only a slight breeze on my return trip from the east side of the delta.  If I had the whole day I probably could have headed over to Anderson Island in a triangle pattern.  I believe there is a water side campground over there meant for boaters that I'll have to try out one of these days.  The photos have been posted in their own album titled "Nisqually Delta trip - Oct 23 2006".  For high res photos go to my flickr page.

Location:  Nisqually Delta (Bird's eye view link)

I'm finally getting my new kayak out for some real kayaking.  I've only had it on a couple of local lakes for some short runs since I bought it last spring.  Hopefully this post won't jinx it but the weather looks good with clouds only coming in during the afternoon and wind only at 2mph.  I've kayaked here before about 3 years ago in a borrowed Coho kayak.  It was great and seemed like a pretty sheltered area so since I'm a bit rusty, this will be a good location.  Hopefully I'll get locks of pics and will post a trip report soon.

*The attached pics include one of my new kayak (at a local lake), and two from my Nisqually trip 3 years ago.