The Indian Ridge Trail (#3221) is a very tough and rugged, roughly 5 mile long trail that follows a ridge-line above Tiger Creek Road (Forest Service Road 65), and overlooks the upper Mill Creek watershed. It's easy to reach from Walla Walla via Mill Creek Road. Some parts of the trail are very steep and slippery, especially near the bottom. Those parts of the trail are not good options for small kids or tennis shoes. On this early August trip, the lower parts of the trail (which starts at about ~3100 ft elevation) were also unpleasantly hot and dry.
Since my friends and I were looking for an easy hike with some flowers and shade, we decided to skip the miserable-looking lower parts of this trail and drive straight to the top. We kept going up FS Road 65 until the junction with the much smaller FS Road 40, where we parked our car at a wide pull-out. That was around 5300 ft elevation. From there it was a gentle hike, slightly under 1 mile, to the peak at 5562 ft. We continued past the peak and down the ridge for another half mile, until turning around to make a ~ 3 mile round trip hike. The hike to the peak was a pleasant mix of forests and rocky meadows, and the views were very nice. The forested parts were slightly overgrown in spots with alder. There was still a wide variety of wildflowers out, including paintbrush, yarrow, buckwheats, coneflowers, and daisies.
Getting there was pretty easy. We came from Walla Walla via Mill Creek Road. Shortly before the turn up Tiger Creek (FS Road 65), the road becomes well-graded gravel and it stays that way all the way to the trailhead. A few spots of minor washboard, but no big ruts or potholes.
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