I had another most-excellent vacation this past week. It started with a backpack trip with Pam (12) and Cyndi (9) on Saturday/Sunday. We hiked up a 4 mile trail to Cutthroat Lakes in the Cascade Mountains east of here. The trail starts at 2800' elevation
and ends at about 4000'.
On the way up were many, many blueberry plants with lots of plump, luscious fruits! This was a major impediment to progress, as we were literally forced to eat them (to protect other hikers, of course!!). On the way up, we saw some suscpicious looking poopies on the trail, full of berries, and quite dark colored. Sorry for that detail, but stay tuned...
The bugs were not too bad, and we continued climbing (after some light snacks and other bribes to keep the girls moving). Finally we found a lake. Dad said "let's go right", the girls said "left", so we went right (naturally). Turned out they were correct, so back we went to the left and found the largest of the lakes. There we found an excellent site right next to the water. Nobody else was around but us and lots of berries.
That evening, we wandered around, catching a few frogs and enjoying the surroundings. We hiked up over a small heather- and berry-covered ridge. Off in the distance, Pam thought she saw a bear! Nah, that's gotta be a rock. Nope, it was moving. So I saw my first bear after years of camping. I ran back to get the binocs, which took 5 minutes. When I got back, they said there had been a cub too, but they walked out of view. Dang... we tried to gain a better view but never saw them again. That explained the berry-filled bear scat on the trail.
Cyndi suddenly was very tired and wanted to get back to the tent. Turned out she was a bit worried about bears. Good thing that black bears are not aggressive towards people (but can be towards people FOOD). So we tied the food up in a tree several hundred metres away, and had a great sleep, all three of us in a two-person tent.
The hike out went quite well, with more berries to munch. The total hike distance was about 10 miles. They did quite well!