Monday, June 16, 2014

Finding A Horizontal Hoodoo On The Dry Tandy Hills While Thinking About Hiking With Maxine

Today I was back on the Tandy Hills for the first time in what seems weeks to have myself a mighty fine time doing some high speed hill hiking.

I prefer my Hoodoos to be vertical, but I can see where there is some merit to the new Horizontal Hoodoo I found today.

A Horizontal Hoodoo would seem to be not as vulnerable to gusts of wind.

I'd taken the Tandy Hills off my to-do list since recent rains. But I saw no sign of anything even remotely wet today. Tandy Falls looks as if it has been dry for a long long time.

I think I can extrapolate from the dry Tandy Hills and assume the Gateway Park mountain bike trails are also dry.

Lately Maxine of Wild Ass Custom Milling fame has been causing me to remember various hiking venues I used to enjoy regularly in my old home zone, like the hike to Fragrance Lake from Larrabee State Park, the hike up Goose Rock in Deception Pass State Park, and my favorite, hiking the trails in Washington Park in Anacortes.

In my latest email exchange with Maxine, regarding the hikes she's been hiking I found myself saying "This is sure making me once again realize what a topographically zero zone I am currently in, where I think the Tandy Hills is a good thing. Big Ed has often opined if the Tandy Hills existed in WA no one would go hiking there because they'd they'd think it was like hiking in a gravel pit. So true."

Well.

While what I opined to Maxine is basically true, what is also true is that my favorite hiking locations in Washington, while incredibly scenic and varied compared to the Tandy Hills, all were over 25 miles from my abode, while the Tandy Hills is less than four miles from my current abode.

Then again, now that you're making me think about it, I could walk out the front door of my house in Mount Vernon and have myself a scenic hike much hillier than the Tandy Hills. And a short mile to the east I could hike to the top of Big Rock, which is a sort of Gibraltar like monolith left behind after the last Ice Age.

If I still had a house to move to in Washington, I think I'd move back to where only a couple days of the year people wish they had air-conditioning....

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