Cougar Mountain
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. :)
