Happy Grandsgiving Hiking Grand Ridge Park

A sunny, November Saturday in western Washington is a great reason for a day hike. This time we were off to Grand Ridge Park.  It's a 14 mile roundtrip in the Issaquah Highlands.  It's a convenient wonderland for hikers, and also a favorite of local mountain bikers.

We're treated to a walk through western redcedar trees, sword ferns, nettles, and more in this beautiful forest. Today was a sunny, but frosty 43 degrees, so the best option was to keep moving along the trail.

Grand Ridge Park is the result of an amazing agreement between Port Blakely, Issaquah Highlands developer, and King County.  For every one acre of developed land, four acres of park land is set aside. It's funny to start out alongside the many Issaquah houses, but you soon lose sight of those, leave them all behind, and are engulfed in forest.  Those Issaquah Highlanders are so lucky to be forest neighbors.

Here's the first of many babbling brooks we passed, or crossed over.  Not too much water this time of year.  It'll be interesting to re-visit in spring to see how the snow melt affects it.  This Park is certainly a year round trail.

It was so nice to have company on my Grand Ridge, post-Thanksgiving hike.  I'd never hiked with a Kitty Kat before.

Our Kitty Kat decided that we were a train chugging along this trail and she was the conductor at the front.  Looking at this picture from near the caboose, I think she may have been right that we did look that way.

Near Seattle, scenes of the sun in November are always picture worthy.

And here the trail passes through a beautiful tree doorway.

I've heard it said that moss grows on the north side, but there's lots of mossy growth on these trees.  Actually all moss needs in order to grow is moisture, and lots of shade (and no sun days) slows down the loss of moisture.  The north side of the tree may have a little more moss in the northern hemisphere because the direction the sun shines, but moss definitely grows on all sides in the Pacific Northwest.

Can you see the face and arms of moss tree man?

And here's a mossy glen.

One of the several, helpful wooden bridges built by the Washington Trails Association.  Many thanks to the volunteers who work so hard to build these bridges and make our hike much easier.

Happy ferns and other young plants growing on a decaying log, as the forest rejuvenates

You can see what a thick forest this grand park is.  I made it almost the whole 14 miles round trip, but not quite. I made it to the overlook of Canyon Creek.  With the short winter daylight and a leisurely start, I was conservative about turning back to be sure I ended the hike in the daylight.  That's one of the advantages of this great hike, you can turn back anytime and still feel well satisfied, and tired!

There are animal sightings including bears, cougars, owls and chipmunks, and more.  This day all I saw was our hiking Kitty Kat.

This was a wonderful day.  Highly recommend this hike, especially for it's convenience.  You will be sharing this well maintained trail with some mountain bikers, so just be cautious to move aside as needed.  The bikers we met were very conscientious about announcing their presence.  I look forward to enjoying this winding trail many times in the future.