A friend & I planned an adventure day of exploration to a spot neither of us had been before, and the weather cooperated with sunny skies and warm temperatures to make the hike even more enjoyable!
We started from the first parking lot access for the Revere Lakes Wildlife Area on Davis Road. The second parking area is located about a mile farther up on Jordan Knott Road (when Davis Road ends, take a left on Jordan Knott), so it doesn't really matter where one starts for this hike (Discover Pass required for both lots). We were the only ones out exploring today. Both parking areas are on the north side of Rock Creek, and this time of the year it's impossible to ford the creek, so we we started our hike by walking downstream on Rock Creek along a row of transplanted juniper trees, passing through the second parking lot in order to cross on the bridge.
Just on the other side of the bridge, there's a farm road that goes upstream on Rock Creek. I think it would actually be possible to do a hike in this area and stick to old farm roads the entire way, but we didn't see the fun in a walk on old road beds. Instead, we went into the usual desert-country exploration mode: wander cross country to some cool feature (be it tree, wildflower, rock outrcopping, or wetland), then pick out some other cool feature and repeat until we decided it was far enough and time to return to the car. The entire wildlife area is 2,291 acres, and even through we missed the entire southeast corner in our wanderings, we covered 7 miles with a mere 458' elevation gain.
Toward the end of our hike we ended up at the cool old farm mentioned in an earlier trip report. From there we noticed there was another bridge over Rock Creek that would allow us to access the John Wayne Pioneer Trail and hike that back to the trailhead. Note that the JWPT requires a separate permit, but fortunately we both already had our permits for the year. If you'd like to try this route, just plan enough in advance to receive your permit before you go; I found the turn-around time in issuing the permit was very fast (see http://parks.state.wa.us/FormCenter/Parks-11/Iron-Horse-trail-use-permit-74).
We watched and were watched by many different birds, and at several points we were surrounded by spying mule deer. The wildflowers and flowering shrubs are out and will be getting better over the next few weeks. I also didn't find a single tick! Next time, we're going to see if we can connect a hike from Revere to the adjacent Escure Ranch/Rock Creek Recreation Area.
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