I've been asking my co-worker to go hike with us for a while, but one of us has been busy or out of town for the last month. I know he likes to hike and I learned a lot from him just from talking to him at work about where to hike and which trails are good to start with.

We were finally able to go hike yesterday with him, so we went to Rattlesnake Ledge. He brought along his 5 month old puppy, Charle. We got started pretty early and left Seattle before 8. We went to Rattlesnake Lake and started out just hiking to Rattlesnake Ledge, about 2 miles up. We stopped there and had great views of Rattlesnake Lake, Mount Si, and North Bend. It only took about an hour and a half to get this far, so we decided to make it a longer hike and go all the way to the east peak, another 2.5 miles from the Ledge.

Rattlesnake Mountain wasn't as steep as Mount Si, but it was a little longer distance wise. Round trip we hiked a total of 9 miles. Charle was fun to play with and she doesn't bark, so that was nice. A lot of people we passed on the trail would stop and pet her and say how cute she was. I don't know how many times I heard my co-worker explain that she's a 5 month old boxer-lab mix. She was so tired towards the end of the hike and fell asleep in the car.

It was a little warm, but not too bad at the higher elevations. We had great views of Mount Rainier at the east peak. The terrain wasn't as monotonous as Mount Si, with patches of wildflowers, dense forest, and more flat areas. We got a little sunburned, but not that bad. Afterward, we stopped in North Bend for hamburgers at Scott's Dairy Freeze. Troy and I shared a raspberry shake that was pretty good. It was a lot of fun hiking with my co-worker. Hopefully we can go hike again sometime.