Bear Lake

My first big adventure of the summer was camping at Bear Lake with Stacey. We were on the Idaho side of the lake, in St. Charles. It was a lot of fun.... but very wet and sometimes cold. It rained every day we were there - not always the whole day, but enough that we needed ponchos and umbrellas :)

When we first got there, we were greeted by this yellow bird... hopefully you can see it - he's sitting in the middle of the picture on the shrub. He taunted us the rest of our visit. He'd never hold still long enough for me to get a really good picture of him.

These flowers were so bright yellow against the dark of the sky.

We were also visited by this jackrabbit. He came by a couple of times.

Our view of the lake. The rain was a familiar sight by the time we left.

First night sunset. So beautiful!

The next day we drove to Afton, WY and passed this building. Very random.

In Wyoming, we went hiking up to Periodic Springs.

Pretty waterfall we passed.

It started raining before we got the springs, so we had to turn around, but we were then able to see these cute little baby skunks. With no mama around, I jumped out of the truck to get pictures of them. I'm sad it's fuzzy, but you get the idea :)

This one had the flash with it... you can really see the raindrops.

Just as we were getting out of the canyon, we saw some deer.

Funny how when we got back to Idaho... there was sun for a minute.
I love this display. Here's one side of it

and the other. There's a plaque that describes this scene as the descent from "Big Hill" into the valley. They would have to use ropes to lower the wagons down because it was so steep.

Back at the lake.

While we'd been in Wyoming, a hail storm tore through our camp site.
Don't believe me? Here's the proof!

The hail ripped our tablecloth to shreds!

Interestingly, the rest of that day was beautiful and we were even able to look at the stars that night.

Here's a couple shots of 'sunset' that second night - after the hail.

The next day we had a wonderful morning. While we were eating breakfast, this chipmunk decided to join us. He was not scared of us at all. Stacey threw him a piece of green pepper and he ate it, so we named him Pepper :)
We also got to see and hear a lot of people running past our camp - we didn't know there was a marathon going on!

We were able to walk out to the lake. There were lots of these shells on the ground

Remember my post a couple months ago with the bird prints in the snow? Here's bird prints in the sand - it made me happy :) I'm weird, I know.

Even though it was chilly at first, I did stand in the lake.
It was so beautiful to just stand there and listen and watch.
Then the rain came...

We sat in the tent for most of the day - reading and playing games. We decided to get up and stretch our legs... we went on a walk around the campsite.

It rained ALL day Friday (well, starting about noon).
I had quite the swimming pool in the back of my truck.
We eventually got a fire started for dinner, then we sat outside for a while (yep, in the rain).

Luckily, the rain stopped sometime in the very early morning.
We woke up and packed while there was no rain. I believe as we were leaving it started raining again.
The contrast in colors was amazing!

We had a good time. The worst part of the whole trip: I forgot to bring my camera!
Stacey was super nice and let me take pictures with her camera. Between both of us, we took about 317 photos in our 4 day trip :)

The best part of our trip: Our food was SO super yummy!! I love eating food cooked at camp - there's just something about it.
I also got some good 'rain' practice for girls camp.