Yakima Retreat

Originally Aaron and I had a great weekend getaway planned. We had reservations in Port Angeles for two nights - three days. We were going to go over there and do some hiking we have been wanting to do for years. Sol Duc Hot Springs, Hurricane Ridge, La Push Beaches, etc. We were actually very excited about this and had been looking forward to it for weeks, until the weather forecast started turning really bad. It is the rain forest, but we didn't want to hike in the rain, especially Aaron. So, we had to come up with an alternative.

Yakima it was. Not our first pick, but we figured if we got over the mountains we would have a better chance of sunshine. We researched a couple of hikes and headed over, and our three day excursion turned into two.

Our first hike was called Cowich Canyon. When we first got there we were a little nervous and though that we were in the wrong place. I had to take a pic of the parking lot. We totally felt like we were in the middle of redneck ghetto. Broken down cars littered the yards of broken down houses. And, you guessed it, it was raining. But, Carpe Diem, we just bucked up and headed out. Please, please let our hubcaps still be on our car when we return.

The canyon was lined with these really cool layered rocks throughout the whole thing. Very interesting to look at for sure.

Of course it being tail end of summer, coming up on fall, the colors were really starting to come alive. A ton of low vegetation on this hike. A very flat, ex-railroad grade, hike. Nothing special, but we were together and that's what counts.

Just kind of what the more "canyon" parts looked like

Okay, so we were starting to get board. Just walking and walking, well we could do that at home on the Soos Creek trail, so we did some off roading. About halfway through the hike we some some caves up on the hill that just needed some exploring, so up we went.

We quickly discovered what all the teen Yakimaites do with their dates during the weekend..... We called this the "Love Cave". Um.... a little dirty, but does have a little bit of the adventuresome, you could get caught appeal. Did we try it out - maybe if I would have brought that blanket..... who knows.

We were almost to the top, so we just kept going for that nice 360 degree view. Once on top we could see a lot of vineyards in the distance. Too bad we are not wine drinkers being in the wine capital of Washington.

At the top

Just part of the view from up above

More of the cool layered rock after we got back down to the bottom.

A cool "Halloween tree" See the face in it?


THE NEXT DAY

Our other hike, that we did on our way out of town, was the Snow Mt. Ranch Hike. I guess some rich orchard owner bought this old ranch and is turning it into a hiking destination for people in the area. Very generous of him. I have to say though, there is a lot of work to be done here. This was a very frustrating day for us - but again, we were together, and that's all that mattered. And, it was actually sunny on this day!!! That's what we really came for.

The hike started out actually very pretty. It was following an irrigation canal, so there were a lot of trees and pretty brush. Lots and lots of sage. Aaron was really having a lot of nostalgia with the smell. There must be a lot of sage in Idaho where he grew up. He was enjoying the smell immensely. I think that's what he liked the most.

Just a little hitch hiker

Here is the first place where things started to go wrong. Here is a trail marker, but then the trail branched off in two directions and we didn't know which to take. Hmmm. So right we went. We discovered after about 5 minutes that right was wrong. The trail just ended. We wandered around trying to pick it back up again to no avail. So back we went and headed the other way. That ended up being the correct way.

This was pretty much our hiking terrain. Sage brush, dry grass and sage brush. I hope Aaron got his fill of the smell, because that's all that was around.

Here was our second hint that things were not going to go well for us. A complete dead end. We hiking along, probably about 2 miles at this point, and dead end. An old cow salt lick. We wandered around forever trying to find the trail. We picked up a few here and there, but they never went anywhere. We came to the conclusion that there are thousands of trails up there that go to nowhere. Probably old cow trails. Fortunately for us it's really flat, no growth over your head, and we were on a hill so we could see for a long time. We knew which direction the car was at all times, but we could never find the blasted trail.

We spent the next 90 minutes just wandering around sage brush on a mission to find a trail. Find them we did, but again, they just disappeared. Finally we just gave up and started heading the direction of the car. Very interesting. When we did finally get back, two seconds later it started to poor down rain. Thank goodness we got back to the car when we did otherwise that hike would have just pissed me off.

We came to three conclusions on this trip. 1. Yakima sucks and there is nothing to do there 2. you pretty much have to be Mexican to live there and 3. It doesn't really matter as long as you do it with someone you love to be with. We still had fun being together.