Running with the Bears Half Marathong, Mom and I have been trying to run on the trails up here. This was my third time up here, and Mom has been here four times, but until today something always kept us out of the woods. Today we had to drive 8 miles up a mountain on a dirt road without the help of The Witch to get to the trailhead. Car trails are always risky because we never know when the trail will be too difficult for The Covered Wagon, but this dirt road let us through, and at the trailhead we found a secret campground next to a lake. That’s the cool thing about these mountain places, sometimes you think that you’re so far in the wilderness that you’ll be lost forever, and then you find a toilet or a campground that shows that someone took the time to love this corner of the earth enough to build a place to poop in.
The trail ran around the lake that was so clear that we could see fishies swimming inside. “I wonder how fish get up here above 5,000 feet…” Mom wondered. “That’s easy,” I said. “They’re mountain climbing fish. Like dirt roads are trails for cars, rivers are trails for fish.” “You’ve seen some of those rivers. How’s a 1-inch fish going to swim up something like that?” Mom asked, incredulously. Sometimes she can be so dense. “Haven’t you been paying attention on all of our wilderness expeditions?” I asked. “You can get up anything with four wheel drive.” But Mom is a suburban person, so she doesn’t know about four wheel drive and nature.
Oscar the Explorer
#camping #mountainhiking #Dogrunning #roadtrip #Doghiking #plumascounty #hiking #dogtherapy #mountainrunning #spanishpeak
