christopher575 (christopher575) wrote,
christopher575
christopher575

Color me impressed

Not wanting to be overly repetitive with all these extra walking days while I'm avoiding the pool, I realized this morning where I really should be anyway is Japanese Gulch. Back before I started swimming, I'd go a couple of times a week during the summer and fall, and always once a week last year. Now's the time of year when the trails are nice and dry again, so that's where I went, heading straight up the Eastern slope on the first trails as you enter. The Podo was left behind at the dog park at the bottom, where there's a nice view of the sky.



I always love seeing this tree when I go up that way.

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It took just under half an hour to climb up to the top and exit to the road by the Boeing rec center. Just before emerging, I explored a clearing I'd never really checked out before, and found a couch that I'm pretty sure used to be up by the road. I'm impressed that someone was able to move it as far as they did, if it's the same one. Didn't bother getting a photo, since it's so trashed, I couldn't even tell it was a couch until I got right up to it. From even the slightest distance, it looked like a weird fort. My timing was nice, as I caught a pretty decent sunrise from the road.

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There's a neat new bike maintenance station outside their gym now. Cool perk for the employees.

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It's always fun to walk around the ball fields and remember the disastrous first time I got all the way up there. The very trip that inspired me to always wear a hydration pack and neon safety harness.

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By far the most impressive thing I saw was two new picnic tables down at what I call Garbage Plateau, because there was always a lot of trash there. It now seems to be all cleaned up, and whoever put the tables there went through a lot of effort to do it. It's not an easy spot to get to when you're not carrying anything, after all, and I can't imagine it's fun with big table parts. Maybe they used a helicopter.

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The view across the Gulch to the other side seems a little less impressive now that this little tree is poking even further up into it. If you told me it grew ten feet in six months, I'd believe it.

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Another surprising thing was the bike stunts area. Whoever works on it added a side trail so it's really easy to walk all the way through, and I suppose ride a bike around without having to commit to doing all the jumps. Plus on the left in this photo is another completely new trail, complete with a jump.

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I don't know if I'll be able to find it again, but today I used a nice shortcut to get me back down to the center so I could head back down. That decreased my distance a bit, but as it was my first big climb up that direction in a while, I was ready to get going back. I really liked the way the hill looked against the sky, though I couldn't capture the green of the trees from that spot.

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Pretty squares. I made them bigger today because I really like the details in the second and third ones.

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The requisite view looking up from the dog park.

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Today's awesome walk, 4.26 miles in 1:47, 10,741 steps, 432ft gain
4.26 miles in 1:47, 10,741 steps, 432ft gain

I'm so happy the gulch is back in the mix, even if that means the weather isn't to my liking. I'll have to find some other spots for time lapses, but this is definitely a great first one there.



I saw Wonder Woman this afternoon, which was awesome, then brought my car to the shop because the brakes have made a weird noise ever since I had them fixed. Of course, it mostly happens when it's cold, and it was nice and warm this afternoon, so they couldn't hear anything. I left it there so they can try again tomorrow morning and took the bus home. The shop's quite far away, but pretty easy for me to get to and from on the bus, which is nice.
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