Slugs & Snails

On Saturday Leslie and I planned to redeem ourselves from last week's Poo-Poo disaster, but we decided it was safer for just the two of us to go out rather than try another hike with the meetup group.  Maybe we'll work our way up to that...

We found a nice little (6 mile) hike in Coal Creek Park, only about 20 minutes away.  The weather had been absolutely fabulous all week long (we even did an outdoor happy hour on Friday), but once the weekend came along things got a little drearier.  Still it was no where near as bad as the weekend before.  As we were leaving the car and heading out on the trail I asked, "Do you want me to carry the guide book in my pack?" but Leslie said, "No, it's just a park trail why would we need it?"  Hmmmm, another lesson learned :)

I continued to be awed and impressed by the beauty of the PNW.  For some reason the forests here, covered in electric green moss and full of gnarled twisting branches just seem magical and otherworldly to me.  On this particular hike another quirky element got thrown into that mix: snails and slugs.  The trail was completely covered in them, so much so, that you has to carefully watch where you were walking to avoid squishing any.  I know it's sort of hard to tell from the photos, but some were almost 6 inches long!!!

As we came across the first, second, and third unmarked forks in the path we realized that the decision to leave behind the guide book was unwise.  "Luckily" when we took the wrong forks they would just lead to a dead end and we would have to back track and try again.  After awhile the trail we were on ended and dumped us out onto a gravel fireroad.  Was the hike over?  Was it time to turn around and go back?  It certainly felt like we had hiked half way (3 miles), but maybe that was due to all of our little dead-end side trips.  The guide book had promised a waterfall though and damnit we wanted to see a waterfall!!!

There was yet another fork in the gravel fireroad so we explored both directions, but nothing looked particularly promising.  There was no way we could've missed walking past a waterfall, right?  Something seemed suspicious and I wasn't buying Leslie's explanation that, "maybe it's all dried up?"  With as much rain as we get here, that just didn't seem possible.  We started to head back to the car disappointed, but thankfully ran into another group of hikers who had not left their map in the car.

Apparently we had to go another half mile down the fireroad and then meet up with our trail again.  How strange!  I'm so glad we figured it out, because not only was there a beautiful waterfall but there was also a cool abandoned coal mine (all full of water) and dilapidate hotel that had been used by the miners back in the day.  Overall it was a much more positive hiking experience than last weekend and I see many more hikes in our future!

Yes, I know I have a double-chin in this photo, but my arms aren't long enough to take a really good self portrait so this will have to do...

And now for the gratuitous food mention: On Sunday I met up with Besties girls at The Chocolate Box which is half chocolate shop, half cafe, half gelateria, and half wine shop.  No, I don't care that this adds up to 4 halves, all I care about is how amazing the salted caramel hot chocolate was!!  After our chocolate indulgence we decided to go see the movie Bridesmaids.  We had a little time to kill so Rebecca (the girl I met at my very first meetup) and I had a little dinner beforehand.  It was really nice to hang out with her a little more.  The movie was funny, although not exactly my taste.  There were a few super-disgusting scenes and I had to close my eyes.

There should be lots of fun and exciting things coming up in the next few weeks, so lets just hope that I can spare a few minutes to write about them...