Gray Wolf River Trail

The weather is thumbing it's nose at us, I swear. Thursday, Friday and Saturday have been gorgeous, with clear blue skies and Saturday the temps even climbed into the 60s.

Today, Sunday, our designated Hike day... gray and rainy.  *shakes fist* CURSE YOU WASHINGTON!

But the hike was pretty good anyway!  And Happy Whatever You Celebrate Today, whether it's Easter, Eostre, Zombie Jebus Day, Zombie Awareness Day (Remember to double tap!), the day Jesus laid a brilliantly colored egg with candy inside or nothing at all :D



 We decided to head to the Olympic Peninsula today for our hike. We boarded the ferry in Edmonds and headed over to Kingston, WA and headed for the trailhead.



On the drive out we saw some deer in a cow pasture!


It was a cloudy day but not rainy. The clouds were higher so we could still see some of the views.


The trailhead was at the corner of a switchback.


Pretty much immediately after we started the hike, I ended up losing my footing on a rock and jammed both knee and shin into the next rock. It hurt like HELL and it made all the down and up hill portions a real pain.

We started off down the trail and decided to take a loop trail that heads down to an alternate starting point before rejoining the new trail. It was basically a down-up that was unnecessary, but still enjoyable in the views we got.



There was a log with mini mushrooms!

And pretty white flowers.


After some steep downhill we reached the Gray Wolf River.



The trail followed the river for a time before cutting through what seemed like a maze of fallen trees. There was no way to move except by the path.



What followed then was a series of up and down that was decently steep which was not friendly at all to my knee. The sun did come out as we descended back to the river again.

We found several campsites along the rivers edge that looked very tempting as hike-in spots.


The water of the river was just gorgeous.




I wanted to jump in and swim. It was tropical!

The trail was partially washed out by a slide which was a bit unnerving to navigate.


Being along the river again, the path was very pretty and flat.


There was a second campsite and I knew just how I would tie up an inner tube to just sit on the river and read all day long...




The offending rock that destroyed my knee.


The sun came out on our drive home and we even got to see a rainbow while waiting for the ferry!