The Flat Tops Wilderness area quickly became one of our favorite places this summer. With all the new places we have discovered, that is saying a lot!!! It was a wildflower lover's and an off-roader's heaven!! We have never been more muddy, or taken so many pictures in such as short time as this weekend. Due to the excessive photo taking on my part...this blog entry will be a little but heavy on the photo side. Here we go!!
First the wildflowers...
Our campsite was surrounded by an incredible rolling meadow complete with sheep! The windflowers boasted their colors spectacularly and kept my camera rolling! We couldn't believe the clusters of Columbines that were so big you wouldn't be able to fit the whole bundle in one vase if you tried.
Forget-Me-Nots. These are one of my top three favorite flowers! and they grew by the bushel in this wilderness. Spectacular to look our over a field and see a cloud of baby blue and know it was made up of tiny, perfect individual flowers.
We took three trails in a day and a half and every trail was unique, beautiful and challenging! Our favorite spot was where the trail opened up into a wide expanse of slick rock with what looked like a small amount of water running over it. Well, that small trickle of water gathered together to plunge off the edge of the slickrock into a beautiful waterfall surrounded by wildflowers and a marmot to boot!
We made it to Windy Point, an overlook that gave a complete view of the beautiful area: rolling perfectly green hillsides, rocky plateaus, snow-capped peaks in the distance...breathtaking! We also bah-haw'ed a bit through the mud and the muck! There were a few places that we were pretty impressed that we made it through without having to break out the winch! As usual, the pictures just don't do justice to 3D, these mud tracks are about 8-10 inches deep! and the sound that the mud made when you sloshed through it was an awesome slurpy sound that seemed as if it belonged in a movie sound effect!
Ahhh...6 boys taking it easy! Jadeyn was in heaven playing with his 5 cousins.!!! We were joined by Jennifer (Kevin's sister) and her family on our second night. With that many boys, we knew we were going to get good and muddy. Taking turns in the RZR, they cheered Kevin on to go "ONE MORE TIME" through the biggest and deepest mud bogs. When were were through, we had 1/2 inch of mud coating the entire outside (and a lot of the inside!) of the RZR. It took a good three hours to power wash and scrub it off and be able to see the blue underneath again!
We piled everyone one in two trips up to Adam's Lake, a high mountain lake with slow still present on the far bank. We got to do a bit of fishing and tried to catch the school of cutthroat that kept swimming within out sight just off shore. We caught some beauties!!
Some other "wildlife" we discovered were some tadpoles still in their eggs. Leave it to young boys to examine a pond close enough to discover these transparent balls floating near the shore! On another trail we caught a small frog for Jadeyn to chase and play with. He loved plopping it into the creek and catching it again!
1 comment:
Thank you for sharing your blog with us, it was fantastic! Jim and I viewed it together and our emotions went the whole gauge, from awe and wonderment at the beauty of a panoramic view of God's country; to scary videos we could hardly view without biting our fingernails and wonder if the RZR would make it up the hill; to horror and terror from looking at a grasshopper about to meet his death.
Your blog had all the components of a five star movie, but my favorite is hearing Jadeyn describe something about ruined houses. We were in stitches and listened to it several times even though we couldn't understand a word! Thanks so much for sharing scenes from your family. It's a precious blog and you deserve a lot of praise for your creative writing. Much Love, Margo
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