Today we hiked the Beaver Pond Trail to the Pipeline Trail, then followed the Pipeline Trail to the Temple Pond Loop. After stopping for a break on the east side of Temple Pond, we continued along the loop trail out to the Pipeline Trail and made our way along the Pipeline Trail to the spur trail to Temple Pond. That's when things got interesting. Along the spur trail to Temple Pond, we discovered a new trail that forks off to the right. The only signage on the trail indicates that bikers are not allowed. We followed this trail as it wound through the woods along the west and south sides of Temple Pond. We noticed a spur trail through some ferns to the south shore of Temple Pond and this made for a nice lunch spot. After our break, we continued along the new trail to another fork in the trail. We initially took the left fork and discovered a dead end. We returned to the fork and followed it to right and continued along the trail for maybe 1 or 1.5 miles and it eventually returned us to the Pipeline Trail, west of the junction with the Main and River Trails. The new trail appears to be very recently constructed as much of it was thick, loose dirt with a lot of roots in it. This trail is not on any maps that I have seen on Lord Hill. After our unplanned adventure, we returned to the parking lot via the Pipeline and Main Trails, stopping only to take in the viewpoint along the spur trail from the Pipeline Trail. I'm not sure about total mileage due to the new trail and doubling back along the Pipeline Trails but I'm going to ballpark it at about 7 miles total.

Hiked the loop around Beaver Lake at Lord Hill park. Trails were a little muddy but other than that it was a great day for a hike.

We did several of the trails including Beaver Lake Trail, Pipeline Trail, River Trail and Main Trail and as an added bonus, we even climbed up to the look out point at View Point by mistake, but what a view that was on a beautiful sunny day! All of the trails are accessible and without issue. River Trail, the one marked 0.9, had the trail covered in water but it was passable on the extreme edges. This was on a day where it hadn't rained in a while. The trail down to the river had running water on the trail in places but with good hiking shoes this is not an issue. The map at the beginning of the trail is very accurate but despite this, we took Pipeline Cutoff Trail instead of Main Trail as we thought we had counted the third trail from Pipeline. Knowing we needed to take first left, we ended up climbing to View Point. It was there that we realized our mistake but we continued along that trail and picked up River Trail from Main. If you don't have a map, simply take a photo of the map at the beginning of the hike and reference it throughout.

Did several of the trails in Lord Hill Regional Park including Beaver Pond, Pipe Line, Temple Pond, and Main trail. This is a nice network of trails. We didn't see many people on the trail. Most of the time we had it to ourselves. Some of the low level trees are starting to leaf and we saw some with flowers. Trail was muddy in places. Easy parking and port-a-potty at the trailhead.

Having enjoyed the Great horned owl family from a distance last weekend at Nisqually, I was startled to find myself face-to-face with this one. Perhaps it's a geo cache, as I seem to have a knack for stumbling upon those, but I don't know, as I left it undisturbed. Mud, mud, everywhere mud, but I still usually find some kind of treasure here. I startled a bald eagle from its perch at the viewpoint, watched Hooded mergansers and a kingfisher working over Temple Pond 1, found owl pellets, the remains of a large bird, a horse-trodden NW salamander, and the first butterfly of the season.