Chehalis Western Trail & Olympia
The other trail we wanted to explore in the Chehalis area is the Chehalis Western Trail.
The trail is a paved trail that extends 21.2 miles from the Woodward Bay conservation Area north of Olympia to just east of Rainier, WA where it connects with the Yelm Tenino Trail (we want to check that trail out sometime as well.)
We pretty much messed up the whole trailhead location, relying on Google Maps to get there so we actually started the ride at the Red Fir Trailhead. A bit frustrated but decided to just get out and enjoy the day from there rather than more driving to get to the south end of the trail. the Red Fir Trailhead is located at mile 15, (from the north end,) and is about 3 miles north of the Monarch Sculpture Park so we rode down to explore that before heading north.
After walking through the park we headed north to where the Chehalis Western Trail intersects with the Karen Fraser Woodland Trail near Olympia. We turned onto the Woodland Trail and rode into the Capitol Campus . It was fun riding around the grounds as we had the area pretty much to ourselves. Apparently the regular season cutoff date was April 25 so there was no activity in the area. Not being familiar with the calendar for the state legislators it makes me want to learn more about the works of our state government, or…well…more like curious. Anyway, moving on…
From the capitol grounds we rode to the waterfront and had a great lunch at the Dockside Bistro before heading back to our starting point. This trail was a really fun ride. The area we rode was completely isolated by trees from the surrounding areas including when we got closer to Olympia and were riding through the residential areas.