February in WA

So from what I've heard, February is actually one of the nicer months in western WA. And so far that has been pretty much true. It hasn't rained for nearly a week, and not only that, but it's actually been somewhat SUNNY! Most of our non-rainy late fall-early winter days have either been very cloudy, or foggy. This is definitely a nice change of pace! Unfortunately, I'm also told that it won't last through March. Darn.

Anyways, in celebration of the good weather, I went for a hike this past Saturday. It was just in Everett, specifically Forest Park. I'd been to this park before and wasn't impressed with the amount of trails (probably less than a mile of convoluted connecting and twisting paths in a wooded section of the park). These trails were pretty cool for a park in the middle of a city, but not enough to amuse me for very long. Well, I found more trails! There was a random gated park road that I walked down, and it ran parallel to a stream (Pigeon Creek, I believe). There was some pretty cool erosion, and part of a steep bank had been carved away; it looked like sandstone with a younger conglomerate stratum, and then possibly more sandstone/soil above that. When I crossed the creek and took a look at what I thought was a spring coming out of the rock, I realized that the bank wasn't lithified at all! The "conglomerate" stratum was overhanging me, and so in the interest of safety I immediately vacated the area, lol. The "spring" was actually a pool set in a gouge that the flood waters had carved out, and I'm guessing that was the level of the water table on that side of the bank? Which seemed a little odd, as it was at a higher elevation than the other bank, but whatever.

Anyways, I got to the end of this road only to find...a sewage treatment building of some kind. Anticlimactic, huh? Well, not quite. Beyond that was a barbed wire fence, some railroad tracks, and a small sandy beach!!!! Now, the fence said no trespassing, but that of course didn't stop me :D This road was actually in the valley that Pigeon Creek ran through, and so there were decently steep slopes flanking the ends of the fence. Made it pretty easy to simply WALK AROUND the fence, if you took the opportunity to actually investigate those areas. I'm going to return to this beach regularly, I think, in the hopes of finding sea lions.

As I was about to turn around, I noticed that there was a trail going up one of the slopes. The park property was pretty extensive on either side of the road, and there were actually a decent amount of trails on the slopes/in the uplands!!! Overall it was a nice hike, and the weather was very spring-like. It even smelled like spring. At one point at the top of the hill there was a large waste water treatment facility, with a big-ass pipe (4-8 foot diameter? It was fairly far away...) spewing water into a reservoir. The whole complex was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and around it on the outside was a typical suburban greenspace with some cool meadowy type grasses along the perimeter of the mowed grass, and then of course the terrible, invasive Himalayan blackberry. But for some reason the place really reminded me of my childhood. Exploring around the railroad tracks and such. Not exactly "wilderness," but urban/suburban outdoors that hadn't succumbed to development yet. Not sure if that area was park property or PUD property. Anyways, it was back into the woods after that. The trails through the wooded area had a lot of side paths branching off of them, and the topography was decently variable given the area. A lot of small ridges and valleys.

So yeah, there's at least one place in Everett with hiking that isn't terrible. Which is good. Plus the "secret" beach. There was one guy standing down on the beach, and so I didn't go down there. Wasn't sure if he was some type of worker or just a fellow trespasser like me, hehehe. Honestly though, I suspect the "no trespassing" signs are just a formality to keep kids off the train tracks, which do see a lot of train activity so it's a valid concern.

Ok, I'm done rambling on now. I'm sure a lot of people in the midwest would be very jealous if they read them, but I gotta say, I do really miss the winter. And this January had record snowfall!!! Yarg. I would miss that. Oh well, I suppose I'll just have to wait until next winter. Speaking of which, not having a winter is really screwing with my biological clock. It feels like early spring for me...like it should be April, and that I hibernated through the winter or something. In a month or two I'm going to expect warm weather and it's just not going to come.