Ryan & Elizabeth: Heather Lake

These are a few random shots. Tommy's b-day is Aug.11, but we celebrated early since he'll be in Texas on that day. The bottom left pic is of me feeling "artsy" one day. : P Ryan loves to play worship songs on the guitar. It's like being in a coffee shop with live music right in your own living room!

We went for an evening walk at Bayview a few nights ago. We had on mosquito repellent (as we remembered that they were a problem the last time that we'd gone there), but there were so many that you didn't want to talk for fear of getting them in your mouth! I don't recommend going there right now. At least we got some nice sunset pictures though.

Yesterday, Ryan, Tommy, and I went hiking at Heather Lake near Granite Falls. I really wanted to get outdoors after the past few intensive weeks in Michigan and then coming home to head straight back to work and do a research paper. Now I've got a little more free time. Too bad it was rainy! I don't think it's summer here. I think we skipped right over it!!

Anyway, I recommend this hike. It's only 4 miles RT and not too difficult of a climb up.Before you get to the lake, you're in the woods the whole time. There isn't much to see in the way of mountain views. There are some cool old growth trees that were huge! In the pics below, the old growth on the left had a bunch of huge knobs on it with smaller trees growing out of them. The picture on the right didn't come out too well, but I wanted to show how big some of the trees are up there.

Ryan loves to eat berries or other edible "treats" while we hike. I do now too. : ) In these pics there are huckleberries and blueberries.

I took lots of pics, and therefore I needed to do a lot of collaging so that I could display many of them. Too bad that the clouds hid the tops of the mountains. It'd be nice to go again in better weather. We still had a fun time. I should really get some hiking boots though. I'm too cheap and usually just wear tennis shoes, but my feet got soaked yesterday!