A friend and I headed to Central Washington Monday to hike a trail that the hiking guidebook said was nice-enough, but didn't really offer much, view-wise.
Oh, I beg to differ.
Perhaps only in the state of Washington -- where one can hike in over-the-top natural wonderlands like Mt. Rainier National Park or the North Cascades -- would the place you see in the photographs I'm posting today be poo-poo'd as being scenically sub-standard.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the landscape that my friend and I beheld Monday was nothing to complain about, thank-you-very-much Mr. or Ms Snooty Guidebook Author. Neil and I covered 16 miles and did not encounter a single other human being all day long, perhaps thanks to the book's negative report. All we encountered was solitude, snowy silence, and more than a little beauty.
The hike was a fine Christmas Week gift!
