7-27-10 Hooray for Sunshine!

The rain made us all a bit tired so we all took a bit of an afternoon snooze but when we woke up the rain had stopped and we actually saw sunshine poking through the clouds. When you live here on the Kenai Peninsula, you sure don't want to stay inside when it is a sunny summer day so we immediately piled in the car and headed Northeast past the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and into the Chugach National Forest(pic 1) towards Cooper Landing to Ressurection Pass Trail, one of the many, many peninsula hiking trails. If you like to hike, this is definitely the place for you!

After Dan loaded hollow points in his 45 colt pistol,2nd pic) and we signed the log book (3rd pic), we headed up the trail about 2 miles (4 miles round trip). It is a much, much longer trail which one can hike for days but that's all we had time for today. Up the trail we saw the best black bear track we have ever seen (center photo). The bear had been coming down the trail, slipped in the mud and left this beautiful track probably just minutes before we were in that spot! Jode & Kami discovered fresh bear scat right in the middle of the trail which was another sign a bear had just been there! The trail was full of luscious greenery and the smell of new growth accented by the recent rain was in the air last pics row 2& 3). We saw more species of mostly inedible mushrooms than we had ever seen on a trail before (last row 3rd pic). Barry got to taste many kinds of wild berries including watermelon (3rd row 1st pic), currants, and low bush cranberries. Dan also took the opportunity to check on one of our own geocaches we had placed about a half mile up the trail called, "Little Cache for the Trail." The cache was intact and the logbook indicated that there had been many visitors so far this summer! We were getting very worried that we would not get to take Barry on a hike before he left so we were all so happy and grateful for the afternoon sunshine that graced us with its presence today!