These are a few more pictures from Island Lake. The first day, Saturday, we walked around the Lake because of threatening thunderstorms that just kept rolling through, but for some reason, just dribbled on us a few times. So we were not comfortable taking the canoe out on the Lake. As we headed back to the campground though we planned our next day's route. We found a good place to cross the creek between and found a nice trail to walk back on. We had been walking/exploring for a big part of the afternoon, so the trail took us back really very quickly, so we could eat our potato/hamburger mix.
BUT the next morning, we went down to the lake with our CANOE !!! Yea ! It is much harder here than in Minnesota or Wisconsin to find nice canoe "spots" They are not routes here, and probably a reservoir. So we settle for river's that need a pal for a shuttle, or a nice "spot." This was a nice, a very nice spot.
The morning, the lake started out still, and sometimes the sun even popped out. We canoed across the lake in 15 minutes (took an hour to walk back the night before) we portaged (a strange sight to those on the trail it seems) and went to the end of the next lake where the cold mountain water fell into the lake from the third pond. That one was more swampy, but it lead right up a canyon towards the snow-touched peaks & ridges. We walked that way around and found a 4th lake. We had walked up a ridge, and when we got there we discovered the next lake was filled by a nice waterfall. We had to explore to find our way back home on the established trail. That was much longer than the way we had come and it was more difficult than it seemed to look but we did it, we figured it out. However, the sun was no longer coming out !
We had lunch on an island on the way home, which by now was very cold & windy, so we sat with our backs protected by the rock island, looking up a nice canyon we had explored the day before, about where we had turned around to go back. It looked nicer the day before when it was in the sun.
By the time we got back to the tent,it was starting to spit rain and so we got a wet tent again !! This time I had to wash it because it had happened when the kids were still here: it had been put away wet then also and we forgot about it in the busyness so it got moldy.
For the last 3 weeks, Johnny has been in Butte helping them moved to an updated system to get the news on with and it has been quite a challenge---like since last March or something. Starting with sitting in a box it came in for months, because the tech guys didn't want to set it up, and including the fact that some folks don't get or don't like moving from the old system or to a mac. Maybe I should get Johnny to tell the whole story, and then you'll get all the right technical words.
Here are more pictures from our Island lake weekend.
For Labor Day Weekend, Johnny will get a day off for all the hours he has spent over in Butte, not including the 1-1/2 hour commute back & forth. He gave everyone off for Labor Day, so there is no show. Yea !! Now we can get away ! We are going exploring our backyard for 4 days, with the solo canoes to see if we can find trumpeter swans and lakes we haven't seen yet. We are going south of Ennis to Wade & Cliff Lake, near Henry's Lake. We expect the weather to be bad, so we will be close enough to Red Rock Wildlife Refuge if so. I am just hoping it will be better than expected.
