Death March? Not so much...

So, yes, I'm back. And contrary to all my previous Eeyore like observations, I had no death defying activities, no grand battles with altitude or sickness. It was a pretty pleasant day, the hike wasn't too strenuous and though I did indeed get tired, I did not have any dramatic dilemmas to deal with. We missed the divide to the lake we had originally planned to hike in to and so ended up hiking a bit farther than the 3.5 miles, but as I said, it wasn't horrid. The lake itself once we arrived was a little anti-climatic. It had no sheer mountain walls, a fair amount of dead and dying trees and worst of all, no good campsites. We scouted around and after some deliberation realized we had gone to the upper lake so we loaded back up and headed down to the other lakes. They were quite close and going downhill MUCH easier to get to. We still had some difficulty finding a great campsite because the flat areas near the lake were marshy. But we settled on one fairly close to the lower lake. We set up tents and did battle with mosquitoes for the rest of the evening. This lake was actually quite lovely (other than the flying pests).
We decided that as we had already seen the upper lakes and the mosquitoes were SO annoying to leave on Sunday instead of Monday. I do have to say that in spite of the lakes not being "spectacular"(as we have come to expect on our hikes) and the constant insect attack with or without Deet, the trip was well worth it for getting out, being with friends and for the amazing abundance of wildflowers we saw. I have seen bigger wildflowers - but never more different types. I saw sego lilies that were about2.5 feet tall and fields of them! The lupine were phenomenal. We not only saw fields of them we saw bushes of them that went up to my waist. Now that may be normal in New Zealand, but I've never seen anything like it in Idaho. I tried to take as many pics of the different types of them as possible. But, my lack of the enviable, super macro like Celiac has hindered me a bit. I got a lot of background things in focus and blurry flowers...grrrr....That plus I was trying to take many of them on the hike back down just like a horse once we were headed towards home there was no stopping us. Oh, and check out the cool little yellow bird that was chillin by the lake. Very pretty.
It was a great trip and we really enjoyed our visit with Bob and Doris. The are great hosts and friends.