Discovery Park I: Journey to the big tree and bear sightings

My first ride with Nhat as the driver on his first experience with a bridge heading to Discovery Park. The whole ride down was basically a panicked and stressful blur because Nhat recently got his license/a car.

After an hour getting lost in Ballard, we finally made it to the bridge we have to cross to get to Magnolia. However, Nhat accidentally zooms right in and cuts off the people next to us who were turning into the bridge as well. We're then boxed in all around by cars and Nhat started freaking out about the truck driver next to us haha. The peak of allergy season was harsh on John, so his backpack was full of benadryl and toilet paper rolls as we made our way across the park. A long time ago, I came here with my mom and uncle and we found a HUGEEEEE tree somewhere in the forest. I told John and Nhat about the tree, so our main goal was to find it. All three of us were really excited, because from what I remembered, the tree was at least 50ft tall!

It was really sunny today, so the trail was freckled with a bunch of sunspots!

Once we made it through the first half of the trail, we hit the open meadow that overlooks the coastline, where you can see the beach and, faintly, the lighthouse. As we walked, we saw a figure in the very distance and thought it was a bear, because there'd been cougar warnings in this park before.

To our relief, it was a different kind of "bear." So we kept walking through the fields.

We made our way down the cliffside trail area, always in sight of the water, and I started to wonder if I made that tree up. We kept walking, hoping to come across it. Unfortunately, we hit the beach at the end, and decided to call it the endpoint of our hike.

To our surprise, we got to see the "bear" once more before leaving. Such a majestic creature. Such prose.

There was a pretty cool driftwood fort someone'd built by the lighthouse! We walked around for awhile checking it out.

Sundial? Or bloodstone circle?

In the end, we didn't find the big tree. With disappointment lingering in the air, we left Discovery Park feeling a bit emptier than when we had going in. I hope we find the tree on our next visit.