Bagley Lakes in the smoke

 

Terry, Dianne, Melanie (and me behind the camera)

I am trying to write this post without having the option of returning to the Legacy version, so excuse me if I don't get this quite right. The four of us drove up to Heather Meadows in the wilderness area, because we thought the air quality would be better up high. But nope: as you can see in this picture, we had very little view of anything but mountains shrouded in smoke. Although the air was better for breathing, it sure wasn't much better for views.

Bagley Lakes

As you can see, as we walked around the lakes, our view was not great, but the weather seemed warm and we had strong filtered sunlight. We kept thinking it would be getting better, but it never did. We had planned to hike to Ptarmigan Ridge, but when we saw that we would be robbed of a view, we chose this short but lovely hike around the lakes.

Melanie in a great shirt

By the time it warmed up a bit, or after we had been walking awhile, Mel showed us her message shirt: "Hope isn't canceled." The stone bridge is under her feet, and we decided in order to make the hike a bit longer to start up the trail towards Hermann Saddle. We had no intention of getting there, but turned around after a short while and having eaten lots and lots of blueberries (they are ripe and perfect).

Terry, Dianne, me (Mel's picture)

I wanted to add a picture that included me, so you can see that I was really there, too. It was nice to have nowhere special to go, just being outside in the beautiful outdoors, even with the haze. There were still plenty of flowers for us to enjoy, and the weather was comfortable.

A myriad of flowers still in bloom

As I said, we picked lots of blueberries, and somehow or other when I took this picture of Dianne, it turned into a B&W portrait. I don't know how it happened, but I sort of like the looks of it.

The best ones are always just out of reach

Dianne was the best spotter of blueberry patches and found some for us to munch on to our heart's content. The bushes are just beginning to turn red. The berries were so good that it was almost worth the drive just for them!

Another view of nature's garden

We truly enjoyed our short but beautiful walk in the wilderness, and after a couple of hours, we decided to head up to the top of the highway, Artist's Point, just to see if by some chance the air quality was better there.

Visitor's Center on the way to the Point

No, it was no better. As you can see from this picture I took from the car while Melanie was driving, it's not any more clear, but we kept on going until we parked at Artist's Point.

App on Melanie's phone

Melanie has a cool app on her phone that shows you the name of the mountains you are looking at. Or at least would be, if you could see them at all. It was fun to see just what we were missing out on. But all in all, it was a good day, even if we hardly covered enough steps for me to get my daily quota. I can't complain too loudly, though, as I am glad we went, and glad for the great company as well.

:-)