Lake Darling

Kirk took Hannah and Paige on their first ever backpacking trip last weekend. Hannah's backpacking adventures with us as an infant doesn't count. This trip counted because they each carried their own gear and shared the food load.

They hiked to Lake Darling, ate sausage roasted on the fire, set up camp, ate huckleberries, saw three moose, one giant frog and several small frogs. They had a great adventure and are ready to go again.

 

First Day

It was the first day of school today.  Four girls - three schools.  Hannah started Middle School today (scary!), Paige started 5th grade, Maren started 2nd grade and Izzy started preschool (exciting!).

Gem Lake

We are normally rafting on the Lower Salmon river over the Labor Day weekend.  But we had a little change of plans this year and were able to do some fun things closer to home.  Today we packed lunch and headed toward the Cabinet Mountains to hike to Gem Lake.

 

It was a fun and beautiful hike.  But the best part is that the trail was lined from top to bottom with huckleberries. 

 

They were ripe and ready to be picked. We grazed going up and did some serious picking coming down.  We talked about all of the good things we could do with the berries we collected and decided on some homemade huckleberry ice cream.  Yum!