This Beautiful Place-Talapus and Olallie Lakes (Pt 2)

The mushrooms on this hike totally blew my mind! I was thrilled to the point of ridiculousness to see so many mushrooms throughout the entire hike and in some spots at least a dozen different types completely surrounding me! AH! Finally!!! The whole hike was stimulating with all these unfamiliar mushrooms to check out but I also found a few other critters about!

This frozen bee completely surprised me but I took the opportunity to kinda poke him (nicely of course!) and check him out! Fun and random - apparently the whole swarm will become docile just before transporting the Queen to a new hive and there's some crazy videos out there of people scooping them up and just holding handful of chill bees. Pretty neat. There was plenty of toads in the creeks and I found this little mini mini one! And I have to admit, I love this photo below! If you look closely you can see mini frog, chillin, staring out across his entire universe.

 

This Beautiful Place -Talapus and Olallie Lakes (Pt 1)

I think this hike is officially my favorite of all the hikes I have done so far since being here in Washington! The trail was absolutely beautiful from beginning to end, plenty of waterfalls and mushrooms (oh the mushies!!!), traversing through old growth forest to Talapus lake and eventually you climb along the valley to Olallie lake. It's an easy 6 something miles round trip, smack in the middle of Snowqualmie Pass, and there's even a few forest bridges (forest boardwalks?) on the trail!