A perfect day, Part 1

Phil and Libby had kindly waited until Rhodri and I arrived before they set off on a big day up Bridge Creek Canyon. This is a famous and much-loved fishing spot in my family, and it has been many years since I've been up there. We used to be able to drive to Bridge Creek campground and leave the truck there for the day while we did just a little hike before thrashing through the brush down a very steep slope to get to the spot. But now the road has washed out and not been rerouted, we had a bigger hike to do. That was fine with me, especially since we have done a lot of sitting-type traveling the past few days.

We were delighted to see that this year's crop of huckleberries was marvelous with big, fat, juicy berries waiting for us to come along!

We finally got down to the creek and fished for a few short hours before heading back. The trout in this part of the creek seemed to be quite hungry and it was really fun to catch them while wading in the cool water. We put most of them back, but kept 5 to take home for breakfast the next day.  This day was particularly smoky and hot, but there wasn't anything we could do about that.

The other exciting thing that happened is that some of us saw a mother black bear and her 2 cubs! Rhodri spotted her and the cubs directly across from the creek to where Phil was fishing (though he hadn't noticed yet!). She didn't seem too bothered about Rhodri or Phil, and Libby was already up the hill picking berries again while I was still fishing lower down the creek, so neither of us saw the bears anyway. But it was pretty exciting!

Phil's fishing spot directly across from the bears

 In the end, we had hiked 13 miles, caught loads of fish, picked enough berries to make something yummy, and also were able to spend the hiking and berry picking hours having good conversations and generally catching up with each other's lives. Like I said, a perfect day! But this day was not yet over...