Samantha the Mountain Goat....and Mildred lakes

it was 1pm and the worst of my day was over already. I had spent 5 hours at work on a day when I should not have worked at all. But now I was free. It was my first day off since aquiring my new toys, and ice ax and crampons and I was excited and anxious to use them. I had also rented a set of snowshoes. I was trying to decide between Mt pilchuck and the Mildred lakes in the Olympic forest, and since I had no map of pilcuck, I headed west for the Olympics. It turned out to be a bad choice. When I finally got to the trailhead it was after 3 pm. I didn't think I'd need the snowshoes and I then realized I left the crampons at home. After some time rearranging my pack I set off at a slow pace. It had been a long week. The trail was hard to follow and blocked by many fallen trees. There was evidence of storms during the winter, because not only werethere fallen trees but also branches strewn everywhere.
It was very pretty and very green. After a time I heard something that shounded like drums far off in the distance. After a standing still for several minutes to be sure it was not my waterbottle, I determined that it must have been and animal somewhere. After about half an hour I decided I wasn't going to do the whole hike because I was having a hard time finding the trail, I didn't have as much daylight left as I'd like, and no one knew where I was. In spite of this decision, the forest lured my further for another 20 minutes before I reluctanly turned around. The trip back to the car went by much faster than the walk out, and when I returned I found 3 guys on thier way out to camp at the lake. Iwas a little envious. I wasn't ready yet to go home, so I looked at my map for other places to go and found a road that went close to the top of a ridge nearby, and I set out with Samantha (my '04 Xterra) to climb it. This proved to be a less than intelligent idea, when the road just got steeper and steeper and more and more potholed a gravelly and I was afraid I'd get stuck or slide off an edge. Still curiosity kept me going almost to the top until I got to a great view point and a good place to turn around. After parking on the most level ground that was there, I got out and enjoyed the view for a few minutes. The road was so steep that I only felt comfortable going down it in 4L in 1st and 2nd gear. I was home by 7:30pm and wished that I'd gone to Pilchuck instead. I'll need to buy more Green Trails. I lay down to take a nap and woke up 13 hours later. It had been a long week. I can't wait to go back.