Quiet

It is quiet around here. It is as quiet as a Ward Council meeting when the Bishop asks for volunteers to head up the ward social. I am making a box to store quiet book-making materials, admiring pictures of a beautiful baby quilt that was sewn here, enjoying a little chokecherry syrup on my french toast, assembling a box of belongings my kids left, and catching up on everyone's blogs. To adjust ourselves to the quiet we went camping up at Gold Creek this last weekend. It worked. Four-wheelers are not quiet. I had some truly spectacular pictures of Wilbur by a stream running out of the side of a mountain with fuschia monkey flowers all around. But I caught on too late that a camera expert had been using my camera on settings I didn't understand, and the pictures did not turn out. Ahem, Eglantine. (Iwondered why things looked so light and unfocused in the view finder.)


Two male bears grazing on huckleberries at our campsite.


Creek (pronounced "crick" by all educated persons of taste and refinement) near our camp. There were signs all around the camp saying there was no mineral entry allowed. Some how, a company called Geo Terra has the mineral rights. In other words, we were in the national forest but we couldn't pan for gold.

Imagine fourwheeling through a river bed strewn with boulders. Now you have the idea of what it was like to four-wheel into Gold Creek Lake and Thompson Lake. The men loved it. Odd how they long to possess equipment, but are only truly happy when they are beating it to a pulp. Do you suppose they do this with the prospect of getting MORE belongings that have engines if the destroy the ones they already have???
Gold Creek Lake. Jose set the world's record for catching the smallest fish.
Gold Creek Lake. A member of Heck's Angels was fishing with us that day.

Thompson Lake. We caught lots of Brookies about 8 inches long and were eaten alive by mosquitoes. The haze in the picture was due to a forest fire that came alive with warmer temperatures the Saturday we were there.


We had some beautiful views. But we couldn't see the forest for the trees.
Can you find three people in this picture? This is a boulder field near Gold Creek Lake. As we were getting out our fishing equipment Jose heard a grunt in the trees. After we fished here, someone told us that a guy camping here in a tent had a bear claw through his tent. The camper dove into the lake to escape the bear who, evidently, had taken his yearly bath already and didn't fancy another one. The camper came out of the ordeal and the lake chilled but with no injuries, except to the tent. I know just what that poor camper was thinking. " A Border Patrol Agent with his arsenal of guns is never around when you need him..."