Rising Sun (Second Day and Leaving)
I walked to the Lake and meditated on Curly Bear Mountain then decided I would break down and have someone serve me breakfast for a change. I knew I would regret it, but I walked down two the Two Dogs Flat Mesquite Grill outside of the campground and presented myself to be seated. In summary (I know I have been longwinded lately) I was treated pretty shabbily by the bus person and waitress and my panckaes were not cooked all the way and were nothing but runny batter in the middle. I left without leaving a tip rather than do the reasonable thing and wait 10 minutes to get my waitresses attention then ask for some cooked pancakes. I would rather have had the bowl of canned fruit and granola back at the camp.
In spite of this omen I decided to stay another night and paid my fee. I decided to try Gunsight Lake trail a few miles up the road. It was supposed to be 6.2 miles long and rise and fall 500 feet. I headed down the trail around at around 11 am and within 1/2 hour and 1.25 miles I had dropped the 500 feet specified to a crossroads of three trailheads. At the crossroads was another violent but clear stream with a bridge on which sat two young ladies. One asked if I would take their picture and I obliged. Then she asked if I would take one with their camera instead of mine. but seriously, it was another occasion where I wish I had taken a picture because some people won't believe the rest of the story.
I headed down the trail which was relatively flat for the next several miles. It ran near the stream which alternated being violent with rapids and calm as a lake. It was a warm sunny day for a change and I had figured out how to rollup my sweatshirt and hang it on my fanny pack. Whenever I stopped for even a few seconds I was attacked by swarms of mosquitos. I had not done laundry in several days so I was forced to wear a short sleeve shirt that day so I kept moving to avoid having my arms marked up.
Around 1 pm I came to a beautiful wide open valley surrounded by several rocky mountains. The trail was on the side of one of those mountains and was covered with large leafy bushes, dandelions and powder blue wildflowers with the tiniest of petals. There was an enormous waterfall in between two of the mountains and even though it was at least a mile away the sound of rushing water from it dominated the background noise for the whole valley.
Just as I was writing an entry in my journal about the waterfall and clapped my journal to let "da bears" know I was around, the two girls from the bridge appeared on the trail behind me. I thought I had kept a pretty goog pace because I passed a few people early on, but I guess I am still old slow Joe. The more mature girl asked if I was doing research. Again I had to say I was just making personal notes and got a confused look in return.
They headed up the trail ahead of me while I made notes about them in my journal. A few minutes later I actually saw an avalanche occur way up high on one of the distant mountains. It was exciting and seemed to move in slow motion leaving a teardrop shaped scar on the white face of the mountainside. By 1:20 pm I was walking on snowdrifts and by 1:25 pm I was at the lake. There was a primitve backwoods campground there but all the sites and the signs for it were buried in snow. The lake was bigger than Otokomi, but similar in that it was surrounded by rocky mountains that formed a funnel over it with several tall waterfalls spilling water into the lake.
I met up with the girls at the lake and took their picture again (with their camera). I know some people won't believe me, but it is in my written journal, I had guessed that they were swedish when I heard them talk in their native tongue earlier but it turned out they were only Norwegian. I had officially met more 'apparently' eligible women in the last two days than I had met in the previous four years. But did I do anything like try to engage them in conversation and try to understand where they were coming from, of course not. I was so involved with myself I might just as well met up with a new species of tree.
The younger one was friendly and very sweet while the more mature one was kind of standoffish. Our conversation consisted of the mature one and myself spouting out our recent history as to how we got to this point with neither one (especially me) listening to the other. I felt like I had the attitude that "I am not interested in your fascinating story because I have a fascinating story of my own." It turns out they had flew in to San Fransisco from Norway a couple of weeks before and rented a car and were camping out at various places. When I said I was from near Eugene, they said they tried to buy CD's in Eugene on their trip but ended up getting them in Portland. They had stayed in Idaho like I had and were heaed for Yellowstone which I had already been to.
They asked where I was headed. I assumed the trail ended at the lake and I had no interest in going any farther especially since I knew I had a 500 foot hill to climb when I got back. They were considering taking a trail up to the glacier or around the lake but were not sure where the trails were. After about 10 minutes I said I was going to head back and I left. I am always afraid I am going to look like one of those fools that knock down their wife and step on their kids when an unattached attractive and/ or foreign female is around. I've seen it happen a number of times. I guess I go to the other extreme and have a "get the heck away from me approach."
As I started back down the trail the big D raised its ugly head as Jane Weidlin's "My Heart Is Homeless" was running through my ugly head. As I was recording this in my journal I came upon an pseudo-Alpha male and his protege coming up the trail. I said "Its not too much farther," in the hi-ho sing-song voice I use when I'm trying to be nice and friendly. "What the lake? Shh. I've been here several times. I know where the lake is," the pseudo-alpha responded. I let it go and started wondering how long it would take before they were leading the Norwegians to the glacier. Big D comes and goes but not when you expect it all the time. I had the best two days of my trip and I was having fun.
I passed a group of Australian men in cowboy hats and then a snooty American girl in lederhosen (shorts with suspenders?) that reprimanded me for not making enough bear noise because she just saw some fresh bear scat on the trail. It turned out to be the same stuff I had seen a few hours earlier only now someone had stepped in it.
I expected to reach the bridge where I had first met the Norwegians around 3:20 pm. At about 3:30 I was getting anxious and frustrated. I pulled out my GPS unit to try to get a fix on how far it was only to find it refused to lock on to the satellites. I was getting a little upset. My battery low light had come on on my camera about halfway up the trail, so I conserved it until I got to the lake and then it went dead. I was out of water also. Finally, I made it to the bridge around 3:50 pm. My hopes of making it back to the car by 4pm dashed.
I started up the monster hill that was so easy to climb down, wheezing as I went. About half way up I caught up to a couple I had passed on the same hill when we first started out. We had a very nice pleasant conversation that renewed my faith in humanity and my ability to talk about something besides myself. I arrived at my car at 4:10 pm and returned to camp.
On the way back to camp I heard a song that I had only heard once before and that was early on this trip. The chorus goes "I tried so hard and got so far and in the end it does not matter. I came too far to lose it all and in the end it does not matter." I kind of like it. My notes say that at 4:42 pm I am "back at camp, exhausted, dirty and depressed listening to an Irish jig on the Canadian Broadcasting Company radio."
I drove the 7 miles into a town called St Mary. Not much of a tow: two Exxon stations a grocery store and a resort hotel. One station had a laundromat sign up, which was what I was looking for having not washed my clothes since the KOA in Fort Collins, Colorado. The laundromat had a closed sign in the window but the door was open. I went in to find every washer and dryer either in-use or out of order. I returned to my campsite wondering why I ever left that comfort zone.
Around 6:30 pm the spaces started filling up around me. Some loudmouths were drinking beer in RealTree camoflouge t-shirts, pants and ball caps. They were 5 males camping out of an astro van with a 4-man RealTree camoflouge tent. A group of college students moved in across from them around 8:30pm and proceeded to set up 4 tents (a cg rule violation) for 10 people (a cg rule violation) and let their dog run around without a leash (a cg rule violation) to defile my next door neighbor's tent who did not return to their camp until 10 pm about the time I climbed into my tent. All this time I was listening to Jane Wiedlien with the headphones on while typing up my journal and reading PKD.
I also took a trip to see Curly Bear Mountain and found a ranger fishing down there who informed me a license was not necessary to fish in the park. It was the first calm night we had on the lake. I vowed to try my hand at fishing if it were just as calm in the morning.