Fishing the Snohomish 8-15-12

I took about a week off from work and Dave and I were supposed to take Cedar and also my ex-dog Skye across the state to visit my dad.  Unfortunately he was still sick and I was 3 kinds of sick so I had to do little relaxing things around this area instead of bringing a ton of germs to my dad.  We still managed to find fun things to do.  One of these things was to launch his boat into the Snohomish River and fish.  He packed us a picnic, and while we didn't catch anything, it was really fun.  What a huge and beautiful river.

While on the river we caught no fish, but some leaves and weeds, and I even caught a large and heavy piece of bark that was quite exciting until I realized it was not a large and heavy fish.  We also enjoyed seeing parachuters and hot air balloners.

There was a cool dilapidated old railroad bridge that kids apparently used to party on.  Now they seem to congregate near it, as when we returned to the boat launch we could hear them loudly having less than intelligent conversation. 

Sunset was pretty from the river.  I liked this old farm house.  Which reminds me!  I wish I had taken a picture or a movie, but at one point there was a family with a pug who were playing on a beach of the river.  A hereford cow with a very small calf came out of the brush near them and the pug went after them!  The cow was understandably threatened by this odd midget wolf-descendant and charged it a bit, stomping around and tossing her head, and the woman ran at the animals yelling for "Pugsley."  I was a bit worried that the cow might charge this bigger target, but luckily instead Pugsley gave up on its large beef dinner and came back to her and the herefords moved on up the river.  It was exciting, but I was glad I didn't need to go use my First Responder training. 

Also a train happened to go over one of the working railway bridges while we were on the river.  It was actually pretty cool to see from this angle. 

Mountain Biking to Monte Cristo 8-3-12

It was a hot day that Justus, Dave and I mountain biked up to the Monte Cristo ghost town.  I had hiked this before and noticed that the vast majority of the trail is a dirt road, so perfect for biking. 

The river crossing, where bridges have historically not lasted, is a large log.  It was a bit tricky to get the bikes over the root ball, but otherwise there was plenty of room for both person and bike.

The rugged ridges along the river were gorgeous with the blue sky backdrop.

The trip to Monte Cristo was a nice challenge for people that haven't been on bicycles much and especially for Dave who had been sick for a couple weeks.  The elevation gain is not huge, but it is a steady gain, and even where it seems flat you are doing a bit of pedaling. 

It took us a couple hours to get in.... only about 30 minutes to get back out!  Everytime we stopped we were swarmed with biting deer flies too.  Yikes.  It was worth the trip though!

One of the cool things in Monte Cristo is the old railroad turn around.  It seems so out of place now, with no trace of train track (other than one buried under the trail and uncovered by the river's erosion of said trail).

There were also pretty wildflowers out there for our viewing pleasure.  What a lovely day!

Toward the end of our ride, Dave was going to attempt to bicycle through the river instead of crossing on the log.  It got deep pretty fast, so he turned around, but it was very entertaining for Justus and I, and probably very refreshing for him!  : )