Seems like the current trend is for a number of the local companies to give their employees 1-2 days off for mental health. No complaints here. I had mine last Friday, but Shawn was on call that day, so he'd pushed his days off to Monday and Tuesday. So I also took Tuesday off so we could do something during the day.
Tuesday morning, I quickly did a lot of internet scanning and added a bunch of "south of Seattle" destinations to Google maps so we could just play it by ear for the day. It was a nice time to explore that area because, possibly for the first time ever, we did not hit traffic in Tacoma/JBLM. And Tuesday during the school year isn't a very popular time for people to be out, so socially distancing was pretty easy.
Kubota Garden
I'd heard from friends about this pretty little Japanese garden in South Seattle. It's lovely and free, but somehow it seems less popular than the one in the Arboretum. It was fun to walk on the winding paths, looking for decorative stone markers and crossing bridges. There were a number of water features, including some small waterfalls and ponds with fish inside. Lots of flowers in bloom in the gardens, rhododendrons and things of that nature. But I also enjoyed all of the different leaf shapes and formations I saw, which isn't something I normally pay much attention to.
Tolmie State Park
I knew that state parks were open, so I started out by searching for those. Of the ones I had on my list, Tolmie was the only one we made it to. It was a nice combination of beach and woods. We went to the beach first to take a look, then did half of the loop trail that went through the forest, taking the first turnaround back to the parking lot. The woods were nice enough, but there was a lot of mud pits on the trail, and I wanted to get back to the beach to eat my lunch.
There was a part of the beach that we'd seen other people walking around earlier that didn't seem to be accessible from the parking lot side without crossing water. We followed a trail through the woods to get there, and it was long enough that it deterred most people from heading there. Another group was leaving right as we arrived, and we bumped into some people walking over as we were heading back, but we had it to ourselves as we ate lunch and walked around.
Mima Mounds
I'd been here once before, and I always wanted to come back during flower season. It was definitely past peak this time, but there were still flowers to be seen, mostly small, delicate ones that don't really come out in photos. Mima Mounds is an interesting area full of these small mounds that scientists have many theories for but none of them are proven. (My favorite: pocket gophers) Normally, there is a shooting range next door that's active enough that there are signs telling visitors what the gunshots are and where to walk to get a quieter experience. Fortunately, it's either closed for pandemic right now or people just don't feel like shooting, so we had a quiet visit. It was a nice, peaceful place to walk through.
I had to get back home early enough to give my cat his insulin, so we started driving back at that point, with a quick stop at Church's Chicken because that's what I tend to crave when I'm south of Seattle.
A nice mental health day! I hope to do it again sometime soon, since vacations don't seem like they're going to happen for many months.
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