Bearly a Trail

 Those who know Steve know that actually following a trail on a hike is his exception, certainly not his rule.
This was our trail along the Strawberry River. See it?
I didn't, either.
There WAS a little bit of a path between those willows, and it might have been followed by a few humans. The only traveler who'd left a calling card, though, was bear.
Yep, that stuff with all the berry seeds in it is bear scat. (The glove is for size only. Steve wasn't planning to pick it up for examination, thank goodness.)
Bear or no, the fish beckoned, so we burrowed through the tall willows, admiring the scenery when we could.

A Great Blue Heron (I think) posed for us,

giving us a suspicious look before flying away.

The beaver are active along this stream, but the spring flows breached some of the dams.
The beaver built this dam, and put a smattering of 6 inch rocks across it. I've never noticed rocks on a dam before. I wonder how beaver carry rocks. And why? To make the dam sturdier?
We saw yellow monkey-flower along the stream, along with thistle and nettles that made walking a bit uncomfortable.

Steve caught a half dozen decent sized fish, most of them cutthroat, so he was happy. (No photographs.  I was too busy sitting in the shade, reading.) Daisy swam in every available pool, of course.

Late in the afternoon, Steve crossed the stream to do a little more fishing and happened upon a fresh print that looked like this:

Huh. It was either Bigfoot, or a BEAR. Probably the latter.

Steve crossed back over to my side, and we followed the bear-ly there "trail" on back to the truck.

Getting home before dark sounded good to me.

For views from other worlds, click here.