When Henry was born it seemed a family hike (at least a nuclear family hike) was out of the question. I mean, really. He wasn't even two weeks old and even though that's never stopped me dragging one of my precious little monkeys onto a trail before it did seem a little callous to try to make Amy climb a mountain.
The girls had no such excuse, though, so I conned them and Grandpa Jack into a hike to a couple of lakes high on Mt. Si with the promise that we could just about drive right to them. In fact, we did, not that you could tell. The weather was lousy and although we found the first lake it was a toss up as to whether we were five feet or 50 feet above the second.
Not one to be easily dissuaded I convinced Grandpa Jack to return to SMC Lake and Lake Nadeau (and maybe even a third mythical lake) this Father's Day. After all, we'd just had a spectacular day outside of Thorp. How could it go wrong?
Oh, yeah. The age old West versus East thing.
Well, too bad. We went anyway. We got a relatively early start and headed up the North Fork, turned on to the Hancock properties (gotta love that permit!) and had no problems with the roads all the way to the parking spot. We couldn't see the gate for the swirling mist and rain, but it was closed last time.
(Of course, it was open this time and we could have driven another quarter mile, but walking is good for the soul.)
We buzzed right by SMC Lake, knowing what it looked like and that it was barren of fish. (Grandpa Jack had his rod just in case, of course.) Lake Nadeau was slightly more visible, but that only clued us in that it was perhaps a tad early to try to fish it. In fact, it was still probably 75% ice-covered.
We toyed with the idea of continuing around Nadeau to at least say we'd been to Moolock, but after a hard day on the trail yesterday the kids were beat and there was little to be gained. Even Grandpa Jack said he now knew what Shackleton must have felt like.
So we returned to the truck for the annual spilling of the hot chocolate and the long drive home.
Total distance was about 1.8 miles and 850 feet of gain.
