Mill Town Trail — Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021

Given the flooding and landslides across many roads and trails, we opted for a nice urban walk along the Everett waterfront. We started at Legion Park (loo is open), walked north until we could cross Marine View on a crosswalk to catch the sidewalk along the waterfront. There is a lot going on, new buildings and a cleanup and restoration effort at the old mill site. You have to skirt a bit of construction, but there is plenty of access to water views and the Marina. You can see a few osprey nests (osprey are gone for the winter) but the herons like to perch on the same pilings.  At the building that houses Scuttlebutts, there are restrooms inside and a little coffee shop that has a few lunch items also. There is a nice little display of the history of the waterfront, those of us that have been around awhile will remember the smokestacks and smell from the mill. We continued our walk south, wandering here and there until we found the bridge going over the RR tracks connecting the waterfront to the bluff.  There is an elevator, but c'mon this is a walk, get those steps in! The top comes out at Grand Ave park. From there we walked down to 21st and turned to the right where you can access a small pocket park and continue to the P Patch. It is fun to see what is growing here any time of year, now chard, kale and garlic. Once done here we headed back uphill to Colby, turned north and headed back to our starting spot. Watch figured about 8 miles, but probably more like 7 with all the wandering I think the count was a bit off.