Day 6.

So we have been praying to be amazed each morning, and we've not been let down. Today was different - no large mammals to gawk at. Instead, it was scenery. We hiked from Bear Lake up to Emerald Lake, which is at the end of the 'official' trail from Bear Lake, then back down and up to Lake Hiyaha, which sits at the base of Otis Peak and Hallet Peak, in a place known as Chaos Canyon. That is a fitting description, frankly - it looks like the mountain was dynamited and has fallen into a lake...huge slabs and boulders all over, right up to the water. We had a light lunch of salami and cheese, baked in the sun, and loved scrambling about for a bit. In total, we hiked around 7 miles between our lake hikes and the two laps we walked around Sprague Lake looking for the Eastside Moose. No luck there, but we met a great older lady from Ames who loved our kids and wanted to chat! Seems like every car is either from Iowa, Texas, or Kansas here.

Friday in Estes Park brings in a bunch more people; the downtown was crowded today and this evening. Our only real encounter with wild life today was on our way home to the Y camp; a local gal hit a mule deer doe coming around a corner. The deer was pretty badly hurt, but struggling in the middle of a busy highway. She finally lay down in the road, but it was clear she wasn't going to make it. Ended up with this big older guy from Michigan and I dragging her to the shoulder, where she struggled a bit but finally gave it up. The gal was pretty shook up, but we got the chance to talk to her (the family was on hand for this whole thing) and we left once the deer had died and she had calmed down. Suffice to say, not quite what we had expected, but I suppose we ought to be careful when we ask God to amaze us...

No pics tonight. Brady and I are headed up Bible Point around sunrise tomorrow, then one more play day in EP before we begin our trek home. Back to the real world on Tuesday, but not before another day and a half of Colorado, then the trek through Nebraska.