Like Medicine

After four weeks of teaching thirty-five children (going in early, staying late), K decided it was time to get me out of the classroom! Please don't misunderstand, I LOVE teaching, but you know, we all need a little break here and there. He took me camping in the Uintas last night along the Mirror Lake Highway. It was like medicine!

We chose Yellow Pine Campground because it was the lowest elevation campground. We thought we'd try to stay a little warmer than some of the other choices we had. Still, we camped at 7,200 feet and it did get chilly, but we were prepared. We followed our usual routine: choose a site, set up the tent, pay the fee, build a fire, eat dinner, clean up, and marvel at those stars while wondering if the scratching sound was a porcupine coming down out of its tree for the evening.

K made an interesting discovery this morning...we had a VARMINT in our vehicle!!! This has NEVER happened to us before and we are pretty disgusted about it. We always keep a clean camp. We wash dishes. We walk our trash to the dumpsters. We have a blue Rubbermaid tote with a sturdy lid. We have a hard cooler. However, there was one bag of food that K set on top of the cooler inside our vehicle in order to avoid squishing the buns. Here's the proof:

Once we saw the chewed through bag, we wondered, "Is it still in there?"

K was especially sad about missing out on the cookies. He buys this brand rarely and we've never tried this flavor. I guess the "Captiva" wasn't quite captivating enough, because the rodent also seemed to enjoy these:

And one of the most disturbing things we found was the shredded newspaper in the backseat, as if said rodent had plans to stay awhile!

Along with the cookies and chips, there was a bag of hotdog buns in the sack. Those were completely untouched--no chewing, no holes. I guess if it doesn't have hydrogenated oil, it just doesn't rate with the rodents. We cleaned out the whole car the best we could, rattled everything we could rattle, and did our best to make sure we weren't taking any guests home with us. No clue when and where it got in and no clue when and where it got out, but we hope it really did get out! We also hope we're not diagnosed with Hanta Virus or Bubonic Plague in the near future.

We left camp and headed to a higher elevation. It was the most beautiful late summer morning and we seized the day by getting out on a trail we had never tried before. Go figure, it was a Saturday and we still had the place to ourselves. The trail didn't have that much elevation change (we were already above 10,000 feet, closer to 10,500), but we did have to work our way over and through a lot of rocks. Here's a picture of the "trail."

This next photo marks our arrival at Clegg Lake. I usually hike ahead of K, but when we get close to a destination, he just works his way to the front with excitement. The picture after that, makes our hike "official."

At first I thought these were leeches, but no, just baby pine cones.

We sat on this log in complete silence. After many minutes, K offered me some watermelon.

There was so much gold and red. I tried to catch a little color.

We had a great view of Reid's Peak.

Here's Bald Mountain.

I'll end with our lovely view of Notch Peak (or was it Notch Mountain?). K has a word he reserves for the especially beautiful places we find--the places we consider a "jackpot." He proclaimed Clegg Lake to be one of those special spots and I couldn't agree more. The word is, "Glorious!"