DH went and helped B, the camp host sweep off the top of the stone covered cistern which creats water pressure for the campground water spigots. M and B are really nice folks. They have been hosting this campground for 17 years. It is not a job either DH or I would like to do. They tell stories of the neighbors and locals that make it sound like their jobs can be hard to deal with, but they come back year after year and have also made friends here.
We walked part way up the “road” DH and Duncan walked yesterday. Wow I can sure tell we are over 6K feet of altitude. DH went to 8900 feet yesterday but we only went to 7700 feet today. It is a lovely Ponderosa Pine forest mixed with HUGE Douglas Firs and another fir I have yet to identify. They look like the Con-Color Firs sold as Christmas trees, but may be Subalpine Fir or some other kind. We stopped and watched the adult Clark's Nutcracker feeding young ones, and are amazed that they have young off the nest and fully grown already. The woods still look like winter, no snow on the ground at this altitude but no deciduous leaves breaking the buds yet and there are still very few birds in the woods. I wonder if it is still too early or just too barren in spite of, or maybe because of the large forest cover. The soil is hardly what we would call soil at home. It looks more like pea gravel only not so sorted for size nor so rounded in shape. The slopes are steep and there are sheer rock faces with interesting formations. Going up we met two white pick ups trucks coming down, moving very slowly in low gear. The first was carrying a load of Aspen trees balled, for sale? There were a few wildflowers in bloom. Oregon Grape, which I am used to as a largish shrub that can get as tall as a single story building, was very small, individual plants no more than 4” tall with one cluster of bloom and just a few leaves. It grew dispersed over the ground the way cactus do because of the shortage of water. There was also a very small white mustard of some sort also not more than about 4 or 5 inches tall. Yellow False Indigo, a species of Baptisia also called Rattle Pod was in bloom. They were much smaller plants, up to 12” tall and only a few stalks per plant, unlike the Baptisia in my garden which grows to three feet tall and spread a foot or more across at the ground. This is a DRY environment.
We had a fire in our own open fire pit tonight instead of going to one of the little log cabins.
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