Hiking Galena Creek: Jones-White's Creek Trail

Kevin and I took a little 9.2 mile hike a couple Mondays ago, up at Galena Creek Park on the Jones Creek-White's Creek Trail, which I haven't done since last year with my boys (not that we went all the way around with them either!). I did the entire loop with Kevin one other time last summer, but I don't think I blogged about that day. Anyway, I wanted to share some quick pictures- we dropped the boys off at school, and drove up to the trail head and decided on a counter-clockwise direction to knock that big hill off first thing. Whew! I had forgotten how steep that hill is, and how long! I tried to use my new ap on my iPhone to track our hike via GPS, but after the first half hour, I lost my signal and it stopped recording it. That map would've made for a cool addition to this post! Anyway, here are Kevin and Pirate after the first half hour:

And after another half hour, a photo of the clearing below, where you can just make out Washoe Lake:
And the clouds moving in over the peak:
Kevin and Pirate at the top of that huge initial hill before the descent (and here is also where you can opt to go to Church's Lake, which we did last time, and was really just a big mosquito pond, and nothing glorious about it):
We ran most of the next hour back down hill, pausing only to cross over the creek and look at signs. You can't see it from the picture, but this is my favorite bridge with short logs lashed together.
All in all, it took us just under 3 hours to finish the loop. 2:45 I think. I also got to wear my Dirty Girl Gators for the first time! Leopard print to match my snow leopard. :) And they worked marvelously to keep all the dirt and rocks out of my tennies and socks~