April 21, 2004

We got an early start on this local trail. We started about 9:00 am and took it easy along the mostly flat trail. The trail is listed as 2 easy miles. A couple of park rangers told us an osprey was at Island Lake, a little beyond the far end of the loop, so we extended our hike a little bit. We are not sure if we saw the osprey, but we did see quite a variety of birds: coots, mallards, Canadian geese, blue herons, egrets, redwing blackbirds, crows, gulls, and more. Several places we saw ducklings still covered in down.

Near the end of the hike we saw good displays of California poppies and other flowers.