Felt the need to get away from the rain and cold, so visited Cowiche Canyon Preserve for the first time. It's about 2:15 from Seattle to the east parking lot. We followed the Cowiche Canyon Trail to Lone Pine to Radio Flyer to South Rim Trail and dropped back to Cowiche Canyon Trail via Tieton Andesite trail. It was about 6.5 miles. Since it was Earth Day, there were numerous activities and displays set up towards the western end of the trail and lots of people on the Cowiche Canyon Trail. After we started up Lone Pine, we only encountered a couple of mountain bikers until we dropped down Tieton Andesite trail.
It's still early for the wildflowers. There were hardly any along the trail in the canyon. On the trails on the south side of the canyon, the prominent flowers in bloom included hoary balsamroot, phlox, sagebrush violets, and grass widow. At the table set up to provide info on butterflies, they only had a pinned collection instead of a cage with live butterflies and lamented the cool spring had also impacted the butterfly population in the canyon.
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