Hiking at Walton Lake

To see the rest of our trip posts, check out Paddleboarding at Walton Lake and Camping at Walton Lake.

At the trailhead (photo taken with my point and shoot camera)

We only stayed at Walton Lake for two nights, but went on a few different hikes in that time. The one we did multiple times was the path around the lake itself. It was a mostly gravel path that stayed close to the water and followed the edge of the lake all the way around. Near the day use area on the opposite side from where we were camping, the path is actually paved for a short ways for wheelchair access. The entire path around the lake was probably just under a mile long by my best guess, and we did it multiple times each day there.

Taking a water break

On Thursday and Friday we also did one longer hike as well as the lake path and spending time on the water. We chose different paths each time, but both were similar terrain through the woods on narrow but well worn paths. Being so close to a campground, I am sure those paths get plenty of traffic (and we picked up a good deal of garbage left behind by other hikers while we were hiking ourselves).

Showing off their boots on a log

Since the area we were in can have bad cheat grass and lava rock, I had the dogs wear their boots on our Thursday hike, and had Koira wear hers while on the lake path some of the time, since it was gravel and she is pretty tender footed. Luckily, I saw no sign of cheat grass even away from camp, so for our Friday hike the dogs got to leave their boots back at base.

Dog boots back at camp, between hikes.