This was one of those days that involved a change in plans. We slept in a bit later than usual. I was awake, but Ken was still snoozing, and I was thinking about how hard he works to get ready for us to go on vacation. Not only do they pack their week full at the store, but he was training a new work partner. Besides that, he had to have everything ready in the nursery before we left, so I was content not to wake him up. We planned on hiking up to Haiyaha to look across at the spot of the Stomp igloo camp. When we got moving, we went to the shuttle lot and climbed on board one of the busses for the trip up to Bear Lake. The lot was already full, but we pulled out our poles and packs and headed up the trail. We passed by the place that I was pretty sure the winter trail left the main trail, and I could see the area I thought we had cut through on our way to Haiyaha. When we got to Nymph, I was a bit confused about where we had crossed to head up to Dream Lake at the Stomp. Anyway, by this time I was not feeling great and there were so many people that we hoofed it back down the trail with the intention of finding someplace a lot less crowded. We headed over to Hollowell Park and decided to hike to Mill Creek Basin knowing that the meadow there would be full of pretty flowers. The first thing we saw was a coyote doing a little hunting at Hollowell park. He was in pretty tall grass, so we didn't get any pictures of him, but we did capture these pretty flowers along the trail at Hollowell.
And here's a shot of the trail itself. It was nice that it was partly cloudy since this is another trail that starts out in the open and can be pretty hot, especially since we had started a bit late.
Once you are into the trees and along Mill Creek, the trail doesn't level out much. It's not real steep, but it is a pretty constant "up." As you get closer to the Mill Creek Basin, you follow an old logging road and can see the area where the logs were moved out. I think the date on the sign said that logging in the area began in 1902 and continued for several years.
Once we crossed over Mill Creek and into the meadow, the flowers and bees were thick. We saw the biggest bee there I've ever seen in my life, but they didn't bother us a bit. We found a nice lunch log and enjoyed our surroundings. We saw very few people on the trail and no one was in the area where we had our lunch. You've got to love solitude in the Rockies!
I really wanted to cool my feet in this stream, but we headed back across the bridge, knowing the best part of the day was yet to come, our forum GTG!
We did notice little little guy (or girl) enjoying his (or her) own lunch as we were on the trail. He was very pretty, and I didn't mind him intruding on our solitude at all.
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