Welcome to our Murphy's October hike with Russ around Goldie Lake on Mount Seymour! Now, I'll explain why we repeated this hike, as some of you with exceptional memories may remember that Murphy and I did this hike with Heidi several years ago. I hadn't intended to hike around Goldie Lake at all, I'd planned to do a more strenuous hike to the East of this one. We even consulted several maps before we started off:

...as well as the maps I carried in my backpack. After taking in the view to the North East, of the mountains:

...and the view to the South East, of the city suburbs:

...we set off back down the mountain from the parking lot at the top, to find our trail head. That part went smoothly. We found our way in and started off back up, following the trail. It was a fairly rustic trail:

...which, of course, Murphy loved, as there were unlimited opportunities to wade in a drink the mud. Below you have me trying to convince him that this is not a healthy drinking opportunity:

We paused for a few photos along the way, Murphy looking very regal:

...hiking up and down, keeping Murphy on leash for the most part, as I was unfamiliar with this trail, and nervous about where the tail might intersect with the road that cars scream up, going to the top.

As it turns out, I was right to be nervous, not so much about Murphy, but about my own unfamiliarity with the trail. We came to an old abandoned cabin about 15 minutes in to the hike (I think the trail was called "Old Cabin Trail", appropriately enough). We walked around it, peering about, then returned to the trail. Russ piped up, saying; "Are you sure we're going the right way? That bridge looks familiar", but I was certain that the bridges just all looked alike, and that we were continuing on forwards. Russ, trusting soul that he is, went along with me...til we came out to the road, exactly where we'd started! Thankfully for me, he didn't gloat too much. We decided that we didn't want to get lost twice, so we marched back up to the parking lot where we'd started, and chose to hike a path I knew I'd done before, thereby decreasing the chances that I'd get us seriously lost this time!

So down we went to Goldie Lake. Along the way Russ took some lovely pictures of the wildflowers:

Within about 10 minutes we got to the lake. Murphy and I posed for Russ, though Murph was more interested in getting down to the water:

Russ was really pleased that this had been my second choice of locales, as it was beautiful:

We paused to pose for a few pictures. This one I took reminds me of Kermit the frog, sitting on a log, singing "Rainbow Connection" (if Russ had only had a guitar!):

And Russ took some of me and Murphy too, though they required more work to get the pose right:

Murphy was in and out of the water the whole time, loving every minute of this fantastic place. I love the ripples in this picture:

We hung out, about 1/3 of the way around the lake, for quite a while, just taking in the view:

It was absolutely deserted; we saw 3 other people the whole day (1 being a park worker and the other 2 being women who'd accidentally gotten separated on the same trail we'd been lost on earlier!). Russ and I made our way down closer to the water:

Russ played around with Murphy a bit, dashing this way and that. Check out Murphy flying!:

This one I'm including only because I love the heavenly light beams shining down on me!:

And, obviously, Murphy didn't want to leave once we were around to the other side. I had to convince him to come back out of the water to make our way back to the parking lot:

So that was our October hike! We had a very lazy November around here, consisting mostly of me working, then me and Russ heading down to Seattle for Owen's birthday. So next up will be Christmas!

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: December 2009
Here's the link to the previous update: September 2009

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