I’ve always seen the cars parked on the right side of I-90 just outside of Issaquah (heading East), but I’d never parked there myself for a hike up Tiger Mountain – before today. We actually got pretty decent road parking (this is a SUPER POPULAR) hike, and started on our way. Let me backtrack a little by saying that we were in fact going to do Poo Poo Point with Laura and Meghan her summer roommate, but when we got to that trailhead there was NO PARKING at all. Poo Poo Point is a super popular paragliding location, and they apparently get out there early to paraglide. So Tiger Mountain was actually our backup hike, but I’m really glad we did it.

The hike was up through trees – and there were a lot of people (no surprise given the number of cars in the parking lot). Tobin packed Evangeline and as we neared the top and came out of the trees, I was a little concerned he was going to have a heat stroke. Well we made it to the summit and there were tons of people at the top eating their lunches. I counted at least 5 other baby backpacks too, so apparently everyone else had the same idea we had. :)

Evangeline thought the birds at the top were the coolest. We fed them some of her goldfish and they came up really close. She was pointing and saying “OOH OOH” the whole time, it was really cute.

The hike down was a lot faster than the hike up. lol I think that this was my favorite hike yet – much better than Cougar Mountain (at least where we hiked).

View the pictures here.

I took Evangeline out in the backyard today to let her explore – and shot some pictures of her in the process. She’s starting to walk a little now, and loves being outside. :)

View photos here.

My parents stopped by the house today for a few minutes so they could see Evangeline  – well and us too I suppose – but we all know Evangeline is the main attraction :)

View the photos here.

I bought a hiking book from Costco the other day and I was eager to try it out – I found one hike on Cougar Mountain that I thought would be fun (De Leo Wall), so we called our friends and everyone met there – Asher, Laura, Terry, Christina, and us. It took a bit longer to drive there than I anticipated – probably because we don’t know our way around that part of Bellevue/Issaquah, but nevertheless, we made it there and started hiking. Well it wasn’t much of a hike – more of a walk along an old logging trail, but eventually we found our trail.

The book pegged Cougar Mountain as a great getaway close to home, or something like that, but it was kind of ridiculous. Whoever maintains the mountain has decided that more trails is better, which I would normally agree with, except for when one actually tries to hike and HAS to use a map to try to figure out which trail to take and even then feels completely lost… There were trails everywhere! We were trying to find a lookout and we didn’t realize that we’d actually found the lookout until we got home and looked up the hike on the web. Whatever. The hike had no destination (or a letdown of a destination), and we decided after that hike that we like having something to hike to – a beautiful lookout or waterfall or SOMETHING! I’d give the hike a C but the company an A (well some people in our party were complaining so much I might downgrade them to an A- lol), but it was fun. We enjoy our friends and family and it was fun getting out in nature with them. :)

View the pictures here.