Today Wasn't Normal

Michelle and I hiked the Meadowdale trail again this afternoon.

I say again because last time we tackled the trail was July sixth, I was sixteen days post surgery and I ended up in urgent care sucking three liters of fluids through my right arm - good times. The Meadowdale trail is only a mile and a quarter each way, but it's steep down to the beach and even steeper on the way back up to the parking lot. Today's time was twenty one minutes to the beach and twenty eight minutes back, and that included a couple of photo stops. Best of all, I'm pretty confident there isn't any unscheduled medical treatment in my near future.

A funny thing happened on the way to Meadowdale Beach today. It started pretty normal. We parked the car. We loaded the backpack with water bottles and camera gear. We started down the trail and twenty one minutes later we arrived at the park.  At the picnic area there's an underpass that take you under the train tracks to the beach. Here was the problem. The cut under the tracks also funnels a little creek into Puget Sound. Normally, the creek is little more than a trickle. I guess today wasn't normal.  

The path under the tracks was flooded. Since neither of us was prepared for wading up to our knees, we passed on the beach. As I huffed my way up the hill to the car I couldn't help but think somebody should have been thoughtful enough to place a warning sign at the trail head. A little warning would have been nice considering the motivation for our little exercise was the beach. Actually the motivation was exercise, but the beach is where we were going.

Imagine how silly I felt when we go back to the parking lot and right in front of my face was a sign. A big sign. A big warning sign saying the access tunnel to the beach was closed. Funny, I didn't notice the great big beach closed sign before we spent nearly an hour hiking straight down and them immediately straight back up a stupid hill without accessing the beach. Funny.

                                                Here's the good part, the exercise was awesome all the same.