Tuesday 9-12-23 Hiking Mima Falls Trail

 

Let's go on a hike

It appears one again we may be without cell service for the next couple of days so you might see a delay in my blog posts.

It was an overcast day with a little sprinkle now and then. We woke up to 50 degrees, perfect temperature for a hike. 

I crawled out of bed at 7:00 Larry had already been up for an hour. He had the Wave3 heater on to warm the Minnie up. I don't believe that I slept 8.5 hours. I got dressed and then made pancakes.

After breakfast we went on a 6.5 mile hike to Mima Falls. My batteries on my Garmin are low so it said we had hiked 7.5 miles. But all the literature and the camp host said the round trip was 3.3 miles. I guess we'll have to change the batteries out. 

We started from the Minnie around 8:00 and hiked to the main entrance at the trailhead. We hiked .5 miles to the top of a hill where there was a sign showing the trails. The trails are shared with horses, bicycles and hikers. Motorized vehicles including e-bikes aren't allowed on the trails. The trails are very well marked but they can be confusing, one trail is named Mima Falls Trailhead while another is named Mima Falls. I'm glad I had Larry with me. The trail was gorgeous with a lot of trees, ferns and other growth. The trail took us over a creek via bridges that were built for horses. The center of the bridge had rubber padding for the horses to walk on. The trail went up and down the hillside. At places it was steep which got your heart going. The trail was very well used and didn't have a lot of roots in it. At places it did have a lot of loose rocks. This is state forest land and the state does lease it out for logging. You can tell because there's no trees and the logging company did not replant. There was a sign indicating that when an area is logged it will be replanted with 400 trees for every acre. We didn't see that this was done. I was glad it was just a small portion of the hike. While hiking we saw a chair made out of a tree stump with the letter R on it. I thought that was nice someone made me a chair. We also saw a lot of tall trees of different types. One type was a big leaf maple tree. I know this because Larry took a picture of it and Googled it. At the beginning of our hike we saw a couple of guys our age riding bicycles. On the way back we saw a lady riding a bike. When we saw the bicyclists we got off the trail to let them pass. Right before we got to Mima Falls we saw two gentlemen and a dog hiking. We stopped and said hello. One of them said there were four more at the falls. The Mima Fall was very small, it looked like a small stream. I guess because of the time of the year and Washington hasn't gotten much rain. After looking at the falls we visited with the people at the picnic table. They were from Olympia and they talked about the area and the hiking. It was a pleasure to visit with them. After resting we continued our adventure back to the campground. We took the same trail back. We had a great hike.

Large leaf maple

 

Fall colors

 

Bridge to cross over the creek

 

Mima Falls

 

Sitting in my chair

By the time we got back we had hiked for four hours. We rested and then had soup for lunch. We spent the rest of the day hanging around the Minnie. It was dreary and we had already done 18,000 steps. The hike wore us out.

Larry read and I played Sudoku.    

I barbecued pork sausage patties for dinner. While I barbecued I took pictures of some rocks that were painted and named. Some camper before us had a great imagination. The rocks came out very cute.

Mr. Bob and friends

Painted rocks

After dinner Larry and I went for a walk around the campground for about a half hour. By the end of the day I had done 20,500 steps according to my band.