Fall color? Cougar vs Talus

City trees have been putting on their fall color show for several weeks. Forest trees usually turn later...but we've rarely caught them at the right time, and when we attempt a "fall color" hike, the best show is usually when we get back down to in-town areas. IMO this is because people choose to plant trees that have flashy fall color, whereas forests here generally choose conifers. Let's go do a comparison. We'll first loop through the east side of Cougar, then come out into the Talus neighborhood of Issaquah, where we've previously seen good fall color. Let's meet at the Issaquah Transit Center, bus bay 1 (where the eastbound #556 arrives) at 10am. We'll go up the Big Tree Ridge trail, up to the Million Dollar View Pergola, where we can stop for lunch. (One suspects the "million dollar" refers to the price of homes down below, as the "view" is of Lake Sammamish.) Then the Tibbets Marsh, West Tibbets Creek, and Bear Ridge trails will give us a sampler of Cougar foliage. We'll come out at the south end of Talus. Talus is unusual in that it has an extensive forested trail system right in the neighborhood -- it's on steep terrain, and some areas are not suitable for building. But if we stick to those trails, we can't do the fall color comparison of forest trees vs landscaping trees. Folks can decide whether they'd rather see the Talus forest trails or Talus garden / street trees. We can likewise decide, on the way out of Talus, whether we'd rather stick to streets, or take the not-quite-official trail out the north end. Depending on the options folks choose in Talus, the hike is about 7.5 to 8.5 miles, with around 1500 ft elevation gain in the Cougar part. The Cougar section is a little over 4 miles. I can't guarantee fall color in either Cougar or Talus. If you know of reliable fall color viewing, please post in comments or send a message, in case we can try that in the future. Google Maps doesn't show the trails inside Talus, and doesn't have all the Cougar…