Today we had a slow start... and it was fantastic!! I was the first up and right when I got up Grey Jay (the trail angel) was carting stuff in from his truck and getting a fire going. He had coffee going already. I greeted him and introduced myself.
For the next four hours until 12:00 we sat and read, talked, and relaxed. He was pretty much car camping and doing trail magic. We were very jealous of the whole car camping thing. What an extravagant lifestyle car camping is. We all certainly walked away excited for our next car camping trip when we get home, we will have all the comforts. When we finally did get going it was noon, not much exciting terrain today, it was slow going. When we finally reached the second shelter 11.5 miles away it was almost dark. We aren't afraid of night hiking though and the weather for it was great so we headed out again.
A mile down the trail we came to a beautiful field with thousands of blooming flowers and thousands more bumble bees flying all over the place. The pictures of how wonderful this field was will never captures the smells and noises. Its sad. You must come hike this section someday to experience it for yourself!!
When we finally reached the camp it was well past dark. We found a nice little site where we could fit three tents on top of a little hill. We set up and got a fire going.
In the middle of dinner I heard leaves rustling behind our tents. I stopped Tric mid sentence and picked up a branch and went to investigate. As soon as I crested the little hill with our tents on it I saw about 8 pairs of glowing eyes staring at me. Naturally I was a bit spooked. I looked closer and saw pink ears and shapes with black fur. I thought "bears". The southerner in me started shouting "Git!" and "Get out of here!". I told Jersey Girl and Tric that there was a 'pack of bears' over here and they said no way and came to investigate. Immediately they said it wasn't bears and Tric thought they were big boar. Jersey Girl just laughing the whole time said "guys... they're cows".
It turned out there was a herd of black beef cows just behind a barbed wire fence next to our campsite. We hadn't seen them there because we night hiked up to the campsite. Of course, as is trail fashion, they didn't let me forget I referred to them as a 'pack of bears' for quite sometime.
So many bees even the panoramic caught a few!
Your going to get teased on that one for a while. Aunt Lulu
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