Tradition Lake is on the flanks of Tiger Mountain. The trailhead is off the High Point exit where you routinely see lines of cars parked along the frontage road. It felt weird pulling off there instead of in Issaquah, but with only two cars parked at the gate I felt I'd made a great choice.

But hey! Where are those other cars going? Can I keep driving?

Turns out I was in the overflow area. The actual trailhead was a ways up a dirt road. I got in line and pulled into a full parking area. We claimed the last real spot while others circled like vultures.

With Lilly on my back and Tokul in hand Clara and I started down the trail. There were loads of families doing the same thing we were and none of us could find the actual trail. Eventually, three families explored all the little loops at the trailhead and we were off.

The Around the Lake trail is only 1.3 miles long and has minimal elevation gain. However, Clara was still hammered from a lack of sleep courtesy of a rough night camping so an easy trail was just right.

Although it wasn't paved, it was darn close. Clara spent the time identifying trees ("Cedar?") and trying out each and every bench we came to. She was carrying all our snacks in her pack so she really was the boss. We had half our food before we had been on the trail more than 15 minutes.

We got a couple of good looks down to the lake, which looked shallow and warm, but the trail never actually goes to the lake itself. The closest was at its west end where there's a little picnic area in the woods and an observation platform. We had some snacks and the girls ran around a bit. This was especially welcomed by poor Lilly who had been stuck in the pack for the hike in. Tokul chilled under a bench.

After we finished our food we went off-trail down to the lake only to find it was mostly a marsh and not a very wet one at that. I suppose it's more lake-like during the wet season, but that's little consolation and hard to explain to Clara who asked where the lake was.

The way back joined a power line road that was hot and dusty. Clara walked Tokul for a ways then decided she wanted to use the camera. For the first time she got some useable shots, though her finger was frequently over the lens and she clearly wasn't looking through the LCD screen.

Just as we were about to melt in the heat we rounded a corner to find ourselves back at the trailhead. Clara insisted the truck's heater would cool her off and rather than argue I agreed and slyly engaged the AC.

The biggest challenge was keeping Lilly awake until we got home for lunch. Snapping my fingers made her smile, but after almost 20 minutes my fingers were about to fall off.

Total distance was about 1.3 miles. Maybe 100 feet of gain. Maybe...