Took advantage of yesterday's unexpected (to me, anyway) nice weather and checked out the new section of the Cushman Powerline Trail. Calling a walk on a 16-foot-wide paved trail a ‘hike’ is probably a stretch, but as part of the ‘keep Ron from ballooning up like a poison toad™’ campaign of 2010, I can use all the encouragement I can get.
I parked at the tiny Grandview St. trailhead parking lot.
The new segment runs from Grandview St. to 96th St. NW, following along the power lines next to Hwy 16.
<!--more-->At some of the higher elevations along the trail you can catch a glimpse of the harbor through the trees.
I saw ancient petroglyphs and native artifacts.
A cool old barn next to the trail.
A nice pond and meadow. If I had a blanket and a book, this may well have been the end of my hike right here.
Some parts of the trail are elevated to protect the wetlands.
This little excursion also gave me a chance to try out Google Labs My Tracks on my phone.
This slick little app is a stat geek's dream, capturing a bunch of info besides the GPS track.
It even has a speed/elevation visualization graph.
And there's also a satellite view so I can call in air strikes, if necessary.
Tracks can be uploaded to Google Maps and stats to Google Docs
or exported as GPX or KML files (for apps like Google Earth, etc.)
It is a bit of a battery-killer, so I only ran it on the way out. (I'm also waiting for the added feature of teleporting me back to my car when I get to the end of the trail.)
Anyway, it was a nice way to get out while the weather was good. I can't wait until the rest of the trail is complete.
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