Three Forks Natural Area — Attraction in Snoqualmie

This review is not about the dog park, which is a perfectly nice off-leash park. It is about hiking or walking in the Three Forks Natural Area. On Google Maps it had looked like this might be a place to take a nice easy hike by the river. What I found instead was a couple of old farm fields, completely ringed with a dense stand of blackberries. You could get through the blackberries occasionally, and get to the river, but there was no way to walk along the river. In the summer it might be possible to get to a spot to hang out on the river, but in November, after a recent high water, there was lots of mud. There were no maintained hiking trails, and in the places where you get through the stands of blackberries, you are getting through with some difficulty, trying not to get scratched. I think of this place as wetland, bottomland, and probably great habitat, but it isn't really a recreational place.

Update: Let me amend my review and say that the place is much better in the summer. Still not my first choice for a walk along the river. Tanner Landing is a bit better for that. But in the summer when water is low and mud has dried up, it is possible to walk along the...

Yes, there is a dog park. While it seems to be a very nice off-leash dog park, this review is NOT on Three Forks Dog Park. But it might as well be since this is not really a Natural Area. After the dog park, the trail takes you directly into several acres of actively farmed hay field. Keep following the trail and you eventually come to a thistle meadow, at the end of a short trail that leaves the hay farm. I would have gone further, but the other end of the meadow was occupied by some kind of shelter. Looked like either a fort built by local kids or a homeless person's shelter. On the chance that it was the latter, I elected to go no further. The entire area did not impress me as anything particularly "natural." I...

Short but peaceful walk to the river. The trail had some unique sounds of birds we've never heard before. Once at the river, the water was clear and refreshingly cool. However, it did smell slightly as someone else also mentioned in another review. It wasn't strong and constant to deter us but I believe it was from the water because we brought the smell with us afterwards (from being in the water).

It was a nice spot but too crowded for our liking. There were families with kids running around us in our chairs, throwing stones at the water in front of us, playing music, yelling, and even spitting into the water... Maybe if we walk further down the river, we could find a...