Our "Lake" hike

We couldn't make our hike on our scheduled day of Monday so we headed out Tuesday morning. Of course, Monday's skies were beautiful blue and clear, but Tuesday brought smoke filled skies again!

But we loaded up our stuff and headed out for the trail anyway.

We knew that the long hot summer (long for Montana!) had caused a shortage of water everywhere. But we were not prepared for the sight we saw as we pulled near the lake. This is a man made reservoir that is fed by a few small streams and one rather large one. But the lake contained probable only 1/3 of its usual water supply. I can certainly understand why the local people are hoping for a heavy snow this winter.

I am standing in the lake bed just below the largest of the streams that filled the Lake during the year. Yes, it's very low and what water there was had to travel quite a distance to reach what water was in the lake. We did venture out onto the lake bed looking for any treasures that might be there. We did find a boat anchor but it was just to heavy for either of us to carry it home...certainly NOT ME!!!!

I managed to get JW to pose for a picture too! Oh yeah, notice who is carry the back pack!! I am so fortunate to have someone that enjoys going on hikes too. We had such a wonderful day.

After we left the lake bed this is the type of trail we enjoyed around the lake. It's about 7 1/2 miles all the way around but we like to take out time and see everything and we do wander off the trail a lot! Gosh, I don't want to miss ANYTHING!!

The thing missing on this hike was wildlife. We saw a few chipmunks and a squirrel but no deer,elk or bear. We did find some very large moose tracks but I didn't get to see him anywhere. But we sure enjoyed the day anyway. It is a good, easy trail that we feel we could take any of our stay over guest to for a wonderful day picnic out in the woods.