Lake Wilderness Arboretum

 

Yet another excursion by public transit, this time to Lake Wilderness Arboretum in Maple Valley. The arboretum has an interesting history.

We took a bus from downtown Seattle to the Renton Transit Center, then transferred to the 907 bus to Maple Valley. This was a cute little metro bus, very clean and with nice comfortable seats (and seatbelts even). It was a pleasant half hour ride from Renton to Maple Valley.

We got off the bus seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but in fact the bus stop was right next to an affluent neighborhood that we walked through on our way to the arboretum.

There were intermittent sprinkles early on, followed by brighter skies and occasional sun breaks. The word of the day is petrichor, which is that pleasant odor produced when rain falls on dry soil.

Google Maps told us it would be a one mile walk from the bus stop to the arboretum, but it didn't know about a trail that cut the distance in half. Fortunately some other walkers we ran into showed us the way.

A big surprise was a unique 'little free library' built into a tree stump in the arboretum itself.

Another unusual feature of the aboretum is the storywalk. Every month there's a new story.

The Native American Garden explains how various plants and trees were used.

The Children's Discovery Forest was nicely done, although we didn't actually see any children there.

The azaleas were past their prime, but according to the signage the Western Azalea Garden is one of the largest collections in the world, containing some 200 varieties. It must be spectacular in the spring.

At least the mountain laurels were in bloom.

We enjoyed our picnic lunch sitting on a bench by the lake. Very quiet and peaceful.

As we approached Renton on our way home, all the phones on the bus suddenly sounded an emergency alert. It was a severe warning of a chorine leak. The location was just ahead of us and we would be going right by it. The crossroad that we passed by was closed off, but we were able to proceed and although we were within a few hundred feet of the leak we never noticed any sign of chlorine in the air.

We got home to Seattle just as the sun finally came out!

Inspired by our circumnavigation of the Olympic Peninsula, we thought we'd try a day trip to Kingston and Edmonds—two of our favorite destinations. Our good friend Irma came with us, which made the trip even more fun.

We started by taking a metro bus from the apartment to the Seattle ferry terminal, where we met up with Irma and boarded the Kitsap passenger ferry to Kingston. At 30 knots, the trip takes barely more than a half hour.

When we arrived at Kingston, the tide was an extremely low -1.7 feet. The dock at the boat ramp was mostly high and dry!

While strolling around Kingston we came upon this colorful inn. Ending up back at the ferry dock, we enjoyed a nice picnic lunch provided by Irma.

Whenever we visit Kingston, we can't resist treating ourselves to a crepe at the little creperie near the ferry dock. Then it was time to board the Washington State ferry to Edmonds. Since we were traveling eastbound as walk-on passengers, there was no charge for the crossing.

We walked around Edmonds for a while before catching a bus to the Lynnwood transit center. A light rail train was waiting to take us back to Seattle.

Total time: five hours. Total cost (two buses, two ferries, and the light rail): $7 each. Coincidentally this was exactly the same as our entire trip around the Olympic Peninsula. Almost all of it was the $6 fare for the Seattle-Kingston fast ferry, but it was well worth it.