Tuesday, July 8/2014

First Tiger Lily of 2014

Casey, Susie and I went on a ride today.  John was busy catching up on his beauty rest so the three of us headed out to the trails.   I wanted to make a trip over to check out the new snowmobile shelter near Clearwater so we accessed 8 mile trail and headed over.  We had not been on this trail since the Father's Day rally and I wondered what it would be like.  As it turned out, it was not all that bad.   A few bad spots remained but we got through with no trouble.

Love the lilies - competing for the sun

Of course we had to take time to "smell the roses" of which their scent floated in the air on several occasions and I was on a mission to get the "perfect" picture of our glorious wild flowers.  They are out in force now after such a late start.

At the new shelter - currently under construction

We eventually made it over to the new shelter and I must say, I was impressed.  The folks are making a lasting structure, a much needed one for this area.   It sits on a small hill overlooking one of the Twin Lakes.  Once it is done, it will be totally awesome!

view from the shelter - does it get any better than this?

Casey, Susie and Marie at Vimy

Once we were done checking out the shelter, we headed back towards home.  My radiator was kind of acting up so we added water to prevent a situation where I would be overheating and headed back down the trail.   We stopped a few places along the way, eventually ending up at Vimy.  So far, it has been an awesome day so we decided to take the trail home and stay off the North Road.
With that in mind, we accessed a trail we don't often take which meanders several miles further paralleling the road, eventually spitting us back out onto the grid.

Indian Paintbrush

We travelled through fields of Indian Paintbrush and more roses.  Man, the smell was absolutely incredible, making the day a total success for that reason alone!!

Wild Roses

More Indian Paintbrush

Once on the grid, we travelled back to 8 Mile Trail and headed over towards Eddie's Trail and had our last refreshment stop at the little white church.  It was here that Casey was sitting on the quad looking towards the trail that travels beside and beyond the church that he exclaimed "Holy Shit Mom, we need to get out of here right now!!"  I thought there might be a bear or some other rather unfriendly beast decending upon us!!   When I looked, it was a Mom skunk and her 5 babies headed in our direction.  I tried to get the camera out in time to take a pic but Mom was not really too interested in this Kodak moment and quickly ushered the babies into the surrounding bush.  They were quite cute and a great way to end an awesome day of riding.

Mom and five baby skunks by the little white church