Hitting the Trails



On our second weekend, I had read there was a good trail in Gig Harbor, and we wanted to check out a potential place to stay in the area, so we headed over the Narrows to the island. The place to stay wasn’t what we were looking for. It was too far from town to be convenient, but too much of a suburb to feel like you’re out in nature. The trail was also not something we would go back to. If you’re on a bicycle and you want to get across Gig Harbor, you will be very grateful for this trail – it is a little bicycle highway. But it’s not what I would call a running destination. The old Gig Harbor downtown was nice, with kind of a Nantucket or Cape Cod feel to it.




Weekend three presented us with an opportunity to explore further, and Ann found a trail starting in the unpronounceable town of Pullayup leading toward the mountains. It’s a part of a rails to trails project, so it would feel a lot like the KATY trail, and finally get us on our bikes that we had just hauled 3,000 miles to have sitting in our living room untouched for three weeks. And one way the trail is very different from the KATY is that it’s paved, so biking would be extra-easy.



We got on the trail in Orting. It followed the Carbon River, which reminded me of the braided rivers of Alaska. After that, it was just a pleasant ride in the country to the town of South Prairie. Ann got some apples from a trailside apple tree near South Prairie. We later saw a tree that was more loaded

with apples than any tree I had ever seen before.  We turned around at South Prairie, but you could go on to Buckley or Wilkeson, as the trail branched at that point.

The ride back to Orting went much faster, as there was more of a grade than we realized when we were biking out. The trail was well used and active, but certainly not crowded. Several people were fly fishing in the river near Orting. I’m looking forward to going back and riding the other sections. You can read more about the trail at https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/foothills-trail. 

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