Lake 22 is another short and easy hike, an hour and twenty minutes away from Bellevue. It is a roundtrip of 5.4 miles with an elevation gain of 1,350 feet. The toughest thing about this hike was finding parking — it turned out to be surprisingly busy at 8:30am, and we ended up parking half a mile away from the trailhead. In fact, it was so busy initially that we had a large group of people blocking our path ahead on the trail and I started regretting my choice of hike. But fortunately, we managed to break through the crowd and sprint ahead.

People who are inconsiderate enough to park their cars with unnecessary gaps, thus depriving others of precious parking spots — some say these are the folks who end up in “Parking Hell” when they die…where they’re forced to drive around mindlessly looking for parking spots, and everytime they find one, someone else swoops in and takes it from them. (Some others disagree, they say they just get sent to Capitol Hill in Seattle to find parking.)

This might be a bit of a quirk, but when it’s just us, Anu and I prefer to get to the turnaround point of the hike as quickly as possible. We might take a break every couple of miles to have a few sips of water, but we seldom pause to take in the sights or take photos. No, all that must wait until the return journey.

Lake 22 offers a pleasant view with calm waters. There’s actually some snow and ice on the mountain across the lake, which reflects on the surface of the water. There are some gorgeous views of the landscape along the trail. You also pass by several gushing waterfalls. Quite a few old tree trunks lie along the route.

I quite enjoyed seeing the diverse flora along the trail. The most interesting of the lot is a orange-and-yellow wildflower called ‘Western columbine’ (aquilegia formosa). That’s the one on the right, below. I also noticed some wonderfully polished rocks that absolutely deserved to be photographed.

Overall, our parking situation added an extra mile for us to walk, but I’m not sure if that ought to count as part of the hike.