"Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind... We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith." -- Margaret D. Nadauld

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Wild Wild West

Somehow the end up summer crept up on us and we are in the middle of our last full week of vacation. Ugh. It's no secret that I hate fall and I hate, HATE, HATE sending kids back to school. Schedule? Consistency? Order? Who needs em? I've always done better in chaos and disorder. I like getting up in the (mid) morning not knowing what's coming.

But, I love my children, and as such, need to send them to school simply because (for us) that's where they'll grow, increase their knowledge and improve their social skills.


That doesn't stop me from wishing I could have them home with me all the time. That doesn't stop me from wishing that summer vacation was longer and school months were shorter. That doesn't stop me from cramming a whole lotta summer worth of activities in one short week.


Yesterday we went to The Hole.... you know.... over by the big tall mountains? Inigo and I went with Shackie and Little Miss Dolittle. We went just to explore. We don't spend a lot of time over there and since Shack spent her childhood there, she's the perfect person to take us and show us around!


It was a wonderful day! We kicked back and relaxed and kept no schedule.... Just the way I like it.



Aren't these mountains beautiful?!?!


Here's my skinny kid swimming in one of the shallow (i.e. WARM) lakes. I figured, you only live once, so I let him go all the way in... He can dry out later, right?


Can you see him laid on on the log drying? If it weren't for his shorts, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to! Man, he's skinny!


Shackie and Miss Doolittle.

We saw this exciting wildlife! We were hoping it was a wolf, but its tail was too short. It was a coyote. We enjoyed watching it hunt for small rodents while a pronghorn antelope herd was eyeing it warily.

We had a scary thing happen while we were picnicking for lunch, though:


We went to a marshy valley where Shackie usually sees moose. We were hanging around, thinking that if we waited long enough a moose would come out and we'd catch a glimpse of it. We got hungry, so we grabbed our lunches out of the car and walked to a shady spot on the trail to eat. (Who needs a picnic table? We can rough it!!) Where we stopped to eat, there wasn't a very good view of the valley where the moose are, so Inigo and Shackie decided to go ahead on the trail to see if they could see any, leaving Little Miss Doolittle and I behind. We told Shackie if she saw anything, she should whistle and we'd come running.

Little Miss and I were quietly sitting there when we heard Shackie whistle. Cool! There must be a moose! We stood up to go up the trail when we saw Shackie and Inigo, panicked looks on their faces running as fast as they dared. Shackie said, "NO!! Don't come! Get the stuff!! We've got to go!"

WHAT!?!?


She explained as we threw our food back into our bags: Apparently she and Inigo had found a side trail that went down the hillside. It was overgrown and extremely steep. Inigo is an adventurer and wanted to see how far he could get down that trail, so he asked Shackie if they could go. Initially, she said yes, but something stopped her. She told Inigo that maybe they'd better see if they could find out where that trail went before they went down it. Just then, the bushes began moving like a VERY LARGE animal was in them, then they heard a loud growl/snort. They took off running before whatever animal was in there could show itself.

We don't know for sure, but we suspect that instead of finding our moose, they found a bear. The picture blow is where we were. By the time we ate lunch, we were closer to the top right of the picture, where the trees get more dense. I know that moose will hang out on hills, but I don't know if they like to forage in dense brush on a hill that steep. Bears, however, will. We also know that the bears stayed low in the mountains this year. More people have seen bears in our National Park than ever before. It seems that almost everyone who has gone sees one. We also know that bears will grunt and snort a warning before they attack.

We also know that if you see a bear you shouldn't run away from it, but since we didn't actually see the bear, we felt completely confident that we could high tail it out of there!


I am so grateful that Shackie listened to the Spirit and stopped Inigo from walking down that path! Whether it was a bear or a moose or any other wild animal, I am pretty certain that he could have been injured -- most likely seriously.

I gave him a big hug when we got back to the car.

And in spite of it all, it was a GOOD DAY!!!

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(This sunset has nothing to do with our trip to The Hole. We were lucky enough to enjoy this beauty Monday night. This was taken from my front yard.)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Scariness! I'm glad you all didn't get attacked by bears. Did you have your pepper spray with you?

thorkgal said...

One of my favorite places on earth.

Yvonne said...

That is an absolutely beautiful place.

I would have been PETRIFIED!!!!!

I'm so glad your friend listened to the Spirit and all was well.