Little Campbell Lake Hike

 Today we had our summer planning party with the Walkabout hiking group.  It was great to get so many of us all together again after so long being away from each other due to Civid-19. We have our tentative hiking schedule planned for the summer now.  After our meeting we went to Kincaid and hiked the trails around Little Campbell Lake.  A lovely place where I had not been before.  There were 17 of us and 5 other dogs besides my Baby.  Baby was quite freaked out over both the number of people and especially all those loose wildly running and playing dogs.  I ended up carrying her in my arms for most of the hike.  Every time I put her down, she would jump up and try to get me to pick her back up. She finally consented to hike the last mile or so.  

The Fish School Bus was at the lake stocking it with 2000 Rainbow Trout.  I suppose fishing might be quite good in that little lake this summer.

Knik River Trek

 This turned out to be a fabulous hike. My friend Mark suggested taking a little walk from his house to the river bar since the water is quite low right now.  We crossed the old bridge then just kept walking until we came to one of the many islands. It was so nice and wide open that I was able to take the dog off the leash and let her run along with us.  Most of the time she stayed right behind my feet. But a couple of times she got distracted and ran off after something of interest.  The first time she was rolling on something that looked like a stick.  That stick turned out to be a dried out old moose leg! I dragged her away from that artifact.  We encountered another one on our way back.  I wonder where the rest of the moose is! On the island we left the endless glacial silt and wandered along small tree covered ridges. We met a couple of young guys on small fat tired motorbikes. They looked like they were having lots of fun.

We had nice closeup views of Pioneer Peak and the snow slides from this winter. The new leaves on the trees are a welcome sign of spring.  We walked over 5 miles, just exploring the river bar.

Palmer Happy Run

 It's Monday night, time for the weekly Happy Run. It was starting to rain at my house so I wasn't sure if I would do the run or not.  But I did drive down to town and found it wasn't raining.  So off we went, Baby and me.  We ran the 5 mile airport route. Tonight's theme was spring cleanup so I brought along a couple of my dog poop bags. I quickly filled up the first one. It was hard to run while carrying it, so I stashed it in a hole under a light pole, figuring I would just pick it up on my way back from the bike trail.  At one point Baby got so excited over a passing dog that she got under my feet and I stepped on her foot.  I felt so bad when I heard her squeal.  But, happily, she continued running along, apparently not injured. He feet are so tiny that I feel horrible when I step on one. She did great the whole way, running and of course, stopping to sniff every bush, rock and twig along the way. She has to stop and bark at the statue of Balto, the serum run dog that inspired the Iditarod sled dog race. She always acts foolish when she realizes it isn't a real dog! On my way back along the bike trail I found that my stashed trash bag was gone.  Someone found my stash and cleaned it up. At least I assume they cleaned it up.  As soon as we got back to the Palmer Alehouse, it started to rain.  I was glad I wore my raincoat because it got pretty wet during the announcements and raffle. 

Balto Statue

Matanuska Rail Trail - Moose Creek

I really want to walk the whole Palmer-Moose Creek Railroad Trail someday.  It's 6 miles one way and quite possible to leave a car at Moose Creek Campground and another at the Palmer Trailhead.  So far, I've always turned around when I start facing all the rock slides along the way.  I know they're passable but since a slip could send me sliding down to the Matanuska riverbed, I hesitate to cross them while hiking alone.  I've only walked from the Palmer side.  But today I decided to see what the trail is like from the Moose Creek side.  I only hiked in about 2 miles, but I can see that it's a very nice trail.  The first mile follows Moose Creek itself until just above the junction with the Matanuska River.  At that point you are walking on the old railbed.  I did encounter some slide areas but nothing as intimidating as what I have seen from the other direction.  I passed a couple who had hiked from the Palmer side and they confirmed that it is possible to walk the entire way.  They were pretty tough and planned to turn around at the Moose Creek Trailhead and return along the trail back to Palmer.  I passed them again on my way out. The man reminded me of pictures I'd seen of John Muir, with his long gray beard and matching long hair.  Perhaps he was John Muir reincarnated.  I hope I run into them again one day.  They seemed like really nice folks.  I joked to myself that I should go to the Palmer trailhead, hike in and, meet them again. I bet they would be quite surprised to encounter Baby ad her barking, once again.  But I really didn't have time to do that. 

 

Matanuska Railroad Trail

It was raining and cold this morning so I figured I'd likely hang out indoors and accomplish next to nothing.  But I quickly got bored with that idea so drove down to town. By then, the rain had stopped so I decided to go for a little walk along the Palmer Rail Trail. I didn't figure I'd go very far, but once Baby and I started walking, we kept going.  I did want to see how the rock slide areas looked now that the snow is all gone.  In the winter, it was treacherous and impossible to negotiate them safely. After the first mile, the trail is no longer maintained and we encountered many areas where the trail has eroded away or huge rock slides have taken out whole sections of trail. We crossed several of them, and although it made me nervous, we really didn't have any trouble crossing them.  But then we came to a huge double rock slide area and I decided that I preferred to not try to cross that alone.  So we turned back.  One the way back I saw a thin trail that went straight up the side hill.  I wondered where it went and was thinking maybe it went back to the highway.  So we ventured up it.  I decided about halfway up that there was no way I was going to try to get back down it.  It was very steep and I was depending on grabbing trees to keep from slipping. Once we got to the top I was disappointed to find that it just led to a hayfield, that was likely part of someone's yard.  We skirted along the edge of it and tried a couple of different little game trails hoping to find our way back to the rail trail.  But they all led to straight down cliffs.  So then we just followed along the edge of the hayfields hoping to find a way to the road or back to the trail.  We finally found a jeep trail through the field and followed it back to Eagle Street.  I guess it wasn't a good idea to follow a game trail that leads straight up a side hill, when you have no idea where it goes! But it was kind of a fun little adventure anyway.

Eklutna Lakeside Trail

 What looked like a very cloudy day with a good chance of rain, turned out to be a perfect day to hike Eklutna Lakeside Trail.  My friend Alice, and I have a goal of working up to hiking the full 12 miles to Serenity Falls and back in one day.  Last Tuesday we did 10 miles, to Bold Creek and back. We pushed on and added two more miles today and covered 12 miles.  We're hoping to add a couple miles each week until we reach our "Alice & Caren Eklutna Lakeside Trail Challenge." Our challenge also includes Baby the chihuahua.  Today, Baby rode part of the way in my backpack though.  I'm not so sure she was tired so much as tired of the continual wind in her face.  We humans were also getting a bit tired of that. But at least it was to our backs on the return. We were lucky that it never rained on us, but the clouds had certainly rolled in by the time we were back to the car. 

Next week, 14 miles! 

Palmer Happy Run

 I was thinking of wearing my running skirt and maybe a windbreaker since it was 61 degrees at my house.  But I decided to add my flowered running tights because tonight's Happy Run had a flower theme.  I'm so glad I wore those because it was only 51 in town!  It was bitter cold the whole time because the Knik Wind was blowing about 25 MPH.  It was brutal, especially running along the side of the airport where there is nothing to block the wind.  I actually won something at the raffle tonight.  A cute little flasher and a nice reflector that I can clip onto my clothes, or maybe my dog!  Baby ran the whole 5 miles.  I ran faster than usual myself, knowing the faster I ran, the sooner I could get out of that wind.  I'll sleep well tonight because after flying for an hour this morning then hiking the one mile around Reflections Lake, I split wood for two hours.  Then I added the five mile run. It's definitely been a very busy day. 

Baby sprinting out ahead on the bike path