It was a beautiful September day for the Seattle area; highs were expected to be in the 80's. That being said, Jared and Kristina decided it was time to hike into a mountain lake. We love hiking into mountain lakes in Idaho, but we hadn't quite got the swing of things in Washington yet. It seemed liked the first two summers we were here that by the time the lakes thawed out, it was already cold and wet again. Which is why we took advantage of the weather.
Lake Serene came highly suggested to us, and we had tried to hike it once right after we moved here, but it was a complete zoo with people. Based on the fact that we had Logan with us, that isn't always a good combination, so we opted out. However, today when we arrived there were cars in the trail head parking lot, but it wasn't full by any means. So we put on our day packs and headed UP.
Here's a shot of the trail head map.
The hike ended up being 7.2 miles round trip, and it had beautiful scenery -- and the scenery varied a bit. Here is Kristina and Indy at the start of the hike -- we hadn't started going up yet. :)
Here's a rock face pretty early into the hike. We would like to come back again when it wetter because we are pretty sure that the water just cascades off of it.
Here's a shot of the Bridal Veil Falls through the trees. If you wanted a very easy hike and a relatively short hike, you could have just hiked here and called it a day. But you know us, that's NOT how we roll.
After you pass the falls, this is what you see...stairs going UP and UP and UP. The trail has a 2000ft elevation gain, but most of that elevation gain is spread out over 2 miles. So if you do the math, you see that we are serious when we say it goes UP.
Once you get up, the views are spectacular. It is always so great to have views in every direction.
And that Indy is one smart dog -- anytime she had an opportunity to "re-charge", she took full advantage of it. Don't think she EVER gets tired, she literally pulled Jared all of the way to the top and back down again, but we think she can do that because she is very SMART about resting when she can.
Lake Serene...it just thawed out in the middle of August.
Indy enjoying a dip in the lake. She was thinking finally...submersion. Ahhhhhh... By the way, Kristina was looking towards the "lunch rock" -- it was swarming with people.
Our last shot of the lake before it was overtaken with people.
It was a fun, but physically draining hike. You can't go all of the way around the lake without doing some serious scrambling -- and that really isn't possible when you have a dog with you. Since it is such a popular hike, it fills up quick if it is a nice day -- and it was a nice day. So, we basically hiked up (it was a good hike up, we didn't see many people along the way, just a few here and there), ate our lunch, and hiked back down. We should have stayed at the top more and rested up for the trip down, but there were people everywhere. Once we got back down, we all climbed into the back of the truck and propped our feet up so the lactic acid could drain out before we drove home. Of course, Indy just hung out in the back of the truck with us. It was a good day...
