Lily and Lizard Lakes

Today ten Seniors showed up to hike to Lily and Lizard Lakes in a steady rain. Can you believe it? I was thinking that I'd show up because next Thursday is Thanksgiving and I didn't want to miss two Thursdays in a row. I figured I'd be the only one or maybe one other, and we'd cancel the hike. It was gray and rainy, with wind forecast on top of all that. But no, ten of us showed up, and we headed up in a van and a car to the trailhead.

We all started the hike with full rain gear and went up a steady trail covered with lots of detritus from the recent windstorms. As you can see above, we had another person (Frank) trying out the use of an umbrella. Thankfully it was calm when we started out. But it was wet, very wet. I had my raincoat, poncho, some new wool gloves, and my rain pants, which I put on before I even went out the door. We hiked up to Lizard Lake and stopped for lunch. We didn't stop for long, obviously, but my hot soup was glorious, and then we decided to take the trip to Lily Lake and a loop back to the trailhead. This made the whole trip just under nine miles in length and we gained maybe 1,400 feet in elevation.

Our trail was, in a word, wet. Sloppy. Here's a picture of today's trail. Very Pacific Northwest in the fall. Lizard Lake was our first stop, and as someone said, if you've seen Lizard Lake, you've also seen Lily Lake -- they are almost identical, so I'm including a picture of Lizard Lake (first picture above), which could double for Lily Lake.

On the way back down, we stopped at the bridge and I took this picture of an unnamed creek (click any picture to enlarge; this one is worth it). Even our resident expert didn't know the name of it, so I'm naming it Stewart Creek, in my honor. If anybody knows what it really is (at the beginning/end of the hike up to Lily and Lizard), I'll gladly fix the error. (Note: GeezerHiker said it's called Whitehall Creek, a pretty okay name.) We actually had a great time, and early in the afternoon the rain stopped and the wind began, and as we headed home, all of us happy to have had our weekly hike, I will end it here with a wish for everybody: Happy Thanksgiving!
:-)