A Hike in the Sunshine

February 18th (Tuesday)

This morning dawned a beautiful day. The high clouds began to break up, and before 09:00 we had sun shining on our boat. It was lovely. 

After our morning Spanish lesson time we made up some hot tea, packed a light lunch, and headed out. We stopped by the post office to mail the next letter to my parents, and to say "hi" to Dorothy and Tiger. 
We made our way up to one of the many streams and rivers that flow into Link Lake, and we followed it upwards. It did not take long before we had left the stream bed of loose rocks behind, and came up into an area of smooth and rolling bedrock.  

Small six-foot waterfalls dumped into beautiful, crystal clear pools, and flowed down over the rock. For the most part we were able to walk up the stream bed itself, but when the drop was too steep at a waterfall we would go into the forest and climb our way up and around. It was a beautiful area, and the sun was shining down on us. The water was icy cold, of course, since it came from the snowpack that was not very far away, but standing in the sunshine, it really felt like spring.  

While we were up at some of these beautiful pools we tried our luck with some gold panning. 

Unfortunately we didn’t find anything, but we had fun trying.  

Unfortunately Jason’s boots have begun to crack, and so his boots quickly became filled with water. Although his feet were able to warm the contained water slightly, it made his feet very cold, and throughout the day, as the sun left the stream, they got even colder. We headed back home in the late afternoon after a lovely time out in the forest exploring.