We got up at 6 am so we could be out of the cabin by 6:30 in an attempt to be the first on the trail. Ryan said the area where we'd be hiking had a lot of moose and we were hoping to catch some in the early morning. The drive to the trailhead was the shortest yet, we drove through Red Lodge and turned in the direction of the ski resort. I'd say we were on the trail by 7am.
But for all those efforts we never saw a moose on the trail.
Lots of butterflies. One happy lab with his camping crew. Three horses on a trail ride.
Moose are cooler.
Still a beautiful hike. There had been a bad burn in the area in 2008. (We saw a ranger and asked about it.) So the first part of the hike looked a lot like this:
But there was still beauty in the shiny black of those trees.
And there was plenty of life around them.
(I started to think of it as the butterfly hike.)
Sometimes the trail brought us close to water.
And sometimes back to the trees
And here are more pictures of Kevin (apparently I was the camera holder on this hike.)
And finally, after 5 miles, we reached the meadow.
This is a popular place to camp and use as a base camp for other day hikes and we ran into a bunch of campers here, but for us it was a lunch and (for Ryan and Kevin) a quick nap destination. It's also the only place we took a picture of all four of us.
A few more taken in this area:
(Ryan climbed up this rock. The rest of us passed.)
And then we hiked the five miles out, got in our car, and after going about five minutes down the road, I said, "Stop! There's a moose."
As it turns out there were two moose.
Perfect.
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