Vancouver Lake - North Trail — Saturday, Aug. 27, 2016

Southwest Washington > Vancouver Area

I planned a four day weekend road trip to hike all 7 trails built by WTA volunteers in the Southwest Region. It is an ambitious goal, but what better way to celebrate Hike-a-thon and help raise funds for WTA's Trail Programs. I chose to hike the trails that our volunteers had built with Lola and Kai because I wanted them to share the personal connection that I had with the trails. Vancouver Lake was the perfect kick off hike because it was also the first trail work party that Lola ever worked on in 2014. As luck would have it my parents were in town so we got to do the trail together. The light in the early evening was perfect for the hike and made for gorgeous sun-rays coming through the cotton woods. Along the way I remembered every spot I had worked, where the bees stung our volunteers, where I found a birds nest with babies beside the trail, where the archeologists came out to observe, where we stashed a huge pile of gravel and then slowly spread it down the whole trail one shovel full at a time.