Flowing, Distilled, Condensed

Saturday was a fine day in Mason County, Washington. While the Shellfish Festival was the big draw, my husband and I set off for a hike along Big Creek in Olympic National Forest. The 4.5 mile loop trail follows and crosses gushing and trickling Big Creek, Branch Creek, Skinwood Creek, and No Name Creek and offers many log benches and spots for enjoying the first few falling leaves and the still-warm sun.

En route to El Puerto de Angeles IV, a waterfront Mexican restaurant in Hoodsport, we saw a sign for The Hardware Distillery Co. and decided to venture in. I'm not a big fan of distilled spirits, but I cannot resist and old fashioned hardware store. Well, this artisanal distillery is in a former hardware store building (so just a few relic tools on display) and offers free tastings. And now I have a new vice. The "forty five and rainy" season is coming and I figured a few sips of locally distilled gin and aquavit wouldn't hurt. The Hardware Distillery makes several unique and flavorful spirits, including something they call "Bees Knees" because it doesn't fit the vodka or gin category. Many are flavored with Washington State honey and local fruits.

I also cannot resist a good sunset. This one required several roadside pull-offs to get the right view and eventually found us at Sanderson Field, the airport in Shelton, where we had a big sky view of a pretty normal sunset...but a great cloud set.

For details on the Big Creek hike, click here. NOTE: The campground and parking is closed for renovation/expansion, but you can park along the road. The entire loop is now hikable, thanks to the work of the Rose Trail Crew for repairing the bridges!

For details on The Hardware Distillery, click here.

Hover and click to advance photos in this gallery from Mason County, WA.

Monday's Front

Skywatchers and cloud lovers living around the South Salish Sea got quite a show on Monday when a front moved in from the southwest. This day will be recorded as a "rainy day" or a "cloudy day"--but that hardly does justice to the clouds.

Above is a gallery of photos--the front, the rain (actually an umbrella-toting neighbor), and the evening skies afterward. Just hover and click to advance the photos.

The most spectacular part of the evening sky featured two hummingbirds I would not have seen had I not been gawking at the clouds. There were two in the top of a small tree, one perched and presumably enjoying the sky, the other doing that fantastic territorial flight straight up into the sky before a brief pause and plunge down toward the perching bird.

Who did not seem to mind the aggressive behavior or the sharp, loud single chirps. Who could not be moved away from its perch and out of the tableau of skyscape.

Seeing the Trees and the Forests

(Click on painting to advance image gallery).

Olympia artist Kathy Gore-Fuss captures the essence of our native forests in her beautiful and evocative paintings. Kathy is a pleine-aire painter who has set up her easel in many of our forested city parks--where grand old trees and a rich and tangled understory beckon.  These photos were taken at her recent studio show. Check out her portfolio here.

End of Summer Ramble

Driving 120 miles roundtrip for a 2-mile hike might not sound "worth it," but if you slow down and savor the sights along the Spider Lake loop trail, those 2 miles will take you worlds away.

Bring a good friend with maps and a forest-service pass. Bring coffee, chocolate-chip cookies, trail mix, two peaches. Bring your camera (and know how to work your close-up lens. Be willing to stop and marvel at everything. Bring Plants of the Pacific Northwest ("Pojars") and a guide to fungus. Do not think twice about getting down on your hands and knees to get a good look at a quarter-inch-tall fungus or beetle. Don't be surprised if your camera can't quite capture the colors, the details, the texture, the nuances of sunlight and shadow, the way the forest is telling you that summer is over. Have fun anyway.

Here are some of the the things we saw in this mature Douglas-fir, Western Hemlock, Western Red-Cedar forest: Vine Maple, Devil's Club, Stink Currant, Cascara, Ocean Spray, Salmon Berry, Thimbleberry, Red Huckleberry, Salal, Sword Fern, Maidenhair Fern, Bracken, Age on Youth, Red Elderberry, Beaked Hazel, Red Alder, False Solomon's Seal, Hooker's Fairybells, False Lily-of-the-Valley, Queen's Cup, Bunchberry, Foamflower, Vanilla Leaf, Scouler's Corydalis, Lungwort. And....shelf fungus resembling stingrays and the starship Enterprise, the shed exoskeletons of dragonfly larvae inside a hollow cedar stump, teeny tiny cup-shaped fungus, a small population of weather-worn tree stumps emerging ghostlike from the clear, blue-green lake.

Spider Lake is a small lake in the Olympic National Forest, halfway between Lake Cushman and the Skokomish River. It's not easy to find, especially since the driving directions in Day Hiking the Olympic Peninsula and on the Washington Trails Association website are not correct (due to changes in forest-service roads and access). I will be posting correct directions here and on the WTA Trip Report for Spider Lake so you can find your way to this gem of a lake and rich, satisfying ramble. The drive to High Steel Bridge after is well worth it as long as you are not afraid of heights, experience vertigo, lean over too far and lose your sunglasses, camera, or cell phone to the Skokomish River.

Meanwhile, enjoy the photo gallery above (just hover 'n' click on the photo to advance them).