Well the Climb for Clean Air folks are not dog friendly. But it's the weekend, and I wasn't about to leave Lily at home for 10 hours while I'm out frolicking in the woods and Katie is out of town. But this presented a challenge beyond just simply keeping her out of everyone's hair. Since the plan was to through hike we had to shuttle vehicles. So we all met at "Tiger Mountain Pass" on the east side (where I've historically mountain biked a great deal), then shuttled to the west side where we hiked last time. But I could either shuttle Lily in someone else's ride while she was still clean or wait and see if someone would shuttle us later after getting filthy (obvious choice). So I asked the group and despite frowns and comments from the "trip leader" (who didn't actually go on the hike) who said everything except "she can't go on the hike," one of our hikers - AJ - graciously offered to haul Lily and I at the beginning so that we could just load up in our own car at the end of the hike.
The day was a wet one, beginning with intermittent light drizzle. The ground we had previously covered is pretty steep, but the remainder of the voyage was a series of small ups and downs. By the midpoint when we stopped to have lunch the rain was becoming constant and often moderate. When we stopped we combined our food resources to build quite a pile of opulent foods (well you know, for being on the trail). It was pretty diverse for there having been no pre-coordination, but there was certainly no shortage of strawberries, cheese, and chocolate. And I brought all of those! One of our leaders brought a stove and boiled a ton of hot dogs. But I missed out! Everyone (21 people) crowded around a picnic table so there was very little room and also I had to control Lily, so I ended up setting up shop with my pack against a tree and my sit-upon pad a short distance away. So I was a tad anti-social (there were others near me doing the same) and unfortunately this led to missing out on a hot dog! Dang it all! I did eventually attack the picnic table and take part in a little of everything while splitting time between controlling Lily and accepting my friend Naisha's offer to hold Lily for me. And may I say Mint Oreo's are oh so good! Someone even brought one of those gallon cartons of Starbucks coffee!
Lily was pretty darn good all day. I kept her on the leash all day and she didn't pull at all! She got pretty wet but she was happy and never got cold.
I ended up having some good pretty lengthy talks with a bunch of new acquantances! Of course Boeing comes up a lot but I really enjoy discussing it with people. But I was really interested to talk to Bill who works at Senior Service, John who runs a wholesale greenhouse, and Eric who used to be lawyer at Boeing. And that's really been the best part of the journey - making friends with these fantastic people! It just so happened John (and his wife Lynn) also brought a dog. They were considering not through hiking because they didn't think they'd have a ride for the dog at the other side. But I quickly assured them there Dalmation "Balder" was welcome to hitch a ride with us - and they graciously accepted.
We left the west trailhead at 9AM and reached Tiger Summit and the east parking lot where we began the day at about 4:30. I'd say we were on the move for all but 2 hours of that. And we travelled something like 13-16 miles. I'm guessing we covered about 2,500 vertical feet. Not too shabby for a day's work.
This photo is from beyond the west summit - part of the mountain I've never visited. We were in and out of the fog here. Oh, by the way, I was rocking the trekking poles and holding Lily and taking the photo, while walking at this point. 
The spread at lunch somewhere on Tiger Mountain 
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