Vacation Post #5

July 4th: We didn't have any luck fishing, but we did scout out a new river to try tomorrow. This is a good thing because tonight the fireworks will be going off right where we've been fishing all week. While scouting out the new area we picked up 4 cinnamon rolls the size of my head from a 4 shack town. We were all too entirely full to eat them at the time, so we saved them for later.

The hike for the day was a bit of a carebear hike. Jeff and I were to walk around Bear Lake and then jot on down to the Glacier Gorge trailhead. Dan's plan was to hike 1.8 mi up to a different lake and then back down to the truck. Jean's ankle had been hurting her quite a bit, so she was going to wait in the truck for all of us to get back. As Jeff, Dan, and I were piling out of the car a park ranger man came up and asked, "Is there a handicap person in that car?" (Oh yeah, we were parked in a handicap spot because Jean had a handicap doodad for the rearview, and it was closer to the bathrooms and such in case she needed to go.) We told him that there was, and went off to get maps. The ranger man came up to us again, "Will she be okay in there by herself?" We reassured him that she would be fine, and considered telling him that the windows were cracked, but we resisted.

Bear Lake was quite a calm hike, and is largely wheelchair accessible. We circled the lake in about 15 minutes. We saw a squirrel go up and grab a lady by the leg because the thought she might have some food. He startled her so bad that she almost swatted him with the book that she was reading. When the squirrel realized that she didn't have anything for him he started standing up and begging from the other people standing nearby.

We decided against going straight back down to the other trailhead. We had almost 2 hours before we were expected back so Jeff and I hiked up to Alberta Falls. It's only about a half mile from Bear Lake to get to the falls, and it's really beautiful. Up at the top Jeff stopped to knit for a bit, and I got some good pictures. After resting for a while we went down to the Glacier Gorge trailhead where we caught a bus to take us back up to Bear Lake. We were back a full 15 minutes ahead of time, so no harm done. It's too bad that Jean couldn't hike with us, because I think she would have really liked the view.

After our hike, and Jean's nap in the car, we went to Estes Perks. It's a little coffee shop near the park. They have 8 or more hummingbird feeders and several other types of seeded bird feeders. We spotted all sorts of birds while we were there. There were of course the hummingbirds, but we also saw a woodpecker that would get seeds from the birdfeeder, put them into a tree, and then peck them out again to eat them.

The first few days of our vacation were sunny, and almost hot. It was a big departure from the previous year when it was chilly and rained almost every day for at least a few minutes. So of course this trip it was completely sunny up until right before dusk on the 4th of July. I mean, why bother raining unless there's going to be fireworks?