An Evening on the Mountain

Well, late this afternoon Walter and Lily and I took off for Mt. Spokane again. I did some shift switching at work and only have one night off this week. Unfortunately I slept until 2:00 this afternoon (intending of course to get up much earlier) so the day felt pretty shot. I needed to get out and do something and be somewhere pretty and nice after my shift from hell last night so Mt. Spokane sounded like just the spot. The bad news is that my memory card for my camera was still stuck in the card reader of my computer and my batteries went dead so I have no photos to share. And I got a pretty cute one with Lily covered in little green sticky things. So I have included a picture of a place where I went strolling along the Sea of Cortez during Spring Break of this year. Hey, it is sort of like Mt. Spokane except it is along the desert, and there is an ocean, and it is below the Tropic of Cancer, and not in this country...

Anyway, we took the new rig which seems to be just fine and parked at the Mt. Kit Carson trailhead. We did not even get up there until around 6:00 this evening so we had limited time to goof around. My thought was to work with Lily and Walter on a coupler but they were so wild and happy to be out that it just did not work. I usually never let my dogs off-leash but tonight I did. Hell, who is going to be up there late on a Monday evening? We did not see another person while there.

We hiked up the Loop Road (closed to motor vehicles) about a mile or so to the intersection with trail 115. I had never been past that point on the road so we walked down about another 3/4 of a mile just to see what we could see and then turned around and headed back to the intersection. What we saw was pretty much what we had been seeing. We got onto trail 115 which I would NEVER suggest doing from a lower elevation to a higher one. The trail is really steep and highly eroded. Coming down it is hard enough much less going up it, but you do not have to go far before there is a turn off to the right for trail 100. Now, trail 100 is pretty interesting in that it is sort of several different trails. After just a bit you come to another fork and can take trail 100 to the right or to the left. We chose to go right (no, this is not my political inclination coming out). Basically this part of the trail parallels the Loop Road at a higher elevation.

It was so damn pretty there. Once you drop down from the trailhead, there are two spots close with picnic tables and streams coming down the mountain. There are ferns and cedar trees and it is really cool and shady. The trail we took intersected several smaller streams and Walter and Lily played in the water for a bit. Occasionally you can see glimpses of the top of Mt. Spokane and down into the valley and city below. The area where we hiked is a pretty popular place for snowshoeing. This is one of the spots I regularly go to for that. Aside from a few trails and the nordic area, I really do not know Mt. Spokane all that well. I would like to get up there more and explore more of the area.

There is a small camping area up higher on the mountain. Years ago I went up there for a quick overnight with my dog Truman (RIP) and we were the only ones at the campground. All was just wonderful until this skanky guy showed up on his motorcycle. That would have been ok but he got off his bike, turned around, and took a piss. I figure any man who will not at least hide behind a bush can not be trusted. After he set up his tent and it was obvious he was going to stay, we got the hell out of there. The campground is not that great but it is cool in that it is pretty high up on the mountain.

I was made aware of one problem with taking Lily with me. She threw up in the car on the way home and I have this very vague memory of her getting car sick before, or hearing that she has gotten car sick. It was lovely. Oh, and Walter wants to give a shout-out to his friend Bud-E and he wishes his friend Alice a speedy recovery from surgery.