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happy anniversary! (AKA: THE HIKE)

on september 5th, it was our 8th anniversary. I had this BRILLIANT idea that I wanted to hike the entire tolt pipeline trail. our entire family did a 3 mile section of it back in january, and I decided then that someday I wanted to do the whole thing.

so dave did a little research and figured out the best way to do this would be to park a car at one end, drive to the other end and leave that car there. then at the end, we would drive back to pick up that car. we also had bucketloads of gift cards to purple café, which is just off the trail in woodinville, so we figured we’d have dinner there.

we got started right around 1 (we’d left a car at blythe park in bothell that morning, before we went to church). we started in duvall, and it was supposed to be just under 16 miles. a little crazy, but totally doable.090

blackberries are going crazy around here right now and dave has a major weakness… so we frequently had to stop and grab handfulls.091

we started out counting piles of horse poop, but lost count somewhere after 15 (which took all of about 10 minutes) and gave up. we were too busy chatting anyway.IMG_20120902_144924

the trail cuts through neighborhoods, across roads, past people’s horse pastures and houses… outside of one house, right along the trail, we found this old claw-foot tub, just sitting in the grass. I assumed it was probably used to put water in for passing horses, but it was empty…IMG_20120902_145631

and then we saw the sign on the fence. it didn’t say anything about humans in the tub, so we weren’t breaking any rules.093IMG_20120902_145242094

lots of ups and downs.IMG_20120902_165436

our dinner at purple was awesome. I decided to try a ‘flight’ of wine… a sampling of 4 different wines. yummy. my feet were killing me by the time we got there. it was nice to sit down, but I was a little afraid I wasn’t going to be able to get up again! the wine helped. a lot.095097

our food was awesome. dave had a steak of some sort and I had chicken marsalla.099

dinner took a little longer than we had planned for. it was about 7, the sun was going down, we were stuffed, tipsy, tired, and sore… BUT, we had to power through.101of course, it had to be a hill as soon as we crossed the valley… 102

I was SO not excited about climbing a hill. IMG_20120902_191805

at this point, there was a lot of silliness. we were a little tired and loopy.

8 awesome years.103104108

we kept going. it kept getting darker. but we didn’t really have a choice, our car was at the end… and besides, it would be lame to quit at that point. so we just kept going. and I tried not to think about how badly my toes hurt.

we were getting so close. the sun was pretty much down. the sky was still light, but not much. we got to a different looking gate than the normal trail gates. and there were powerlines in the clearing now. and grass… not so much a trail. so dave ran over to the far gate to see if that was, indeed, the continuation of the trail, as it was supposed to be.

it was not.

it was not a trail at all. it was an unhikeable drop off. it was not even a slide-down-on-your-butt kind of trail. but the satelite map made it look like this was how the TRAIL we were on got to the PARK where we had left our car.

so he looked up how else to get to the park…

we were so close to the park. but neigborhoods and woods were between us and the park. the only way to get there was 2.5 miles out of our way on roads. so… we walked. and walked. and walked. it was completely dark at this point, and we had a new concern… that the park closed at dusk and our car may have been towed… so we walked. we toured some nice bothell neighborhoods and a very dark, windy hill. we heard an owl hooting in the woods…

finally, we got to the park.

and we found this.109

the park had closed and they closed and locked the gate at the entrance. not awesome. dave climbed over the fence to see if our car was still there. it was, and there was a note on it saying that the park had closed and if we needed to get our car out, we could call the bothell police and gave the number.

so we did.

and then we sat and waited for the police. we were SO excited when the cop car pulled up! (can’t say I’ve ever had that experience before.) the officer was very nice, but curious what the heck we were doing, walking around in the dark, exhausted, and getting our car locked in the park. we explained that we had just hiked 16 miles for our anniversary. he seemed to think that was a little odd. I can’t imagine why…110

and then, our next hope was that the other car was still parked on the other end! it was, thank goodness, and we finally drove home. it was 10:30pm when we got there. the kids were all still awake, watching a movie and waiting for us.

we all slept in until about 9:30 the next morning, and I could barely move the next day.

but, all in all, it was a very fun day to spend together. it just ended badly. it was a beautiful day, we had a great dinner, we had a fun time hiking and chatting. and if nothing else, it’s a great story. and now we can say we hiked the pipeline.

we did agree that we really hope this is the only anniversary celebration that involves the police…

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