Big Elk Creek

The weather on Labor Day was perfect, so we ventured to try a hike in the afternoon at Big Elk Creek, about an hour away.  The trail was pretty shady and followed a creek up a canyon, but the recent rains had made some sections very muddy, especially where mini-waterfalls trickled across the trail.  We were also leap-frogging the trail with a horse-riding family, which made for some extra muck to avoid on the trail. To quote Hadley, "Ew! Yuck!"

There were some pretty views and first glimpses of fall hitting the tree leaves.  Brilliant in the late afternoon sunshine!

Our turnaround spot was a little camping area someone had used.  We ate our trail snacks and climbed on the nearby boulders before heading back to the car.

Owen is big into stick swords/guns right now, so the whole way back was him 'clearing the way' of bad guys and imaginary foes.  You could say the way back took longer than the way there...

The highlight for me was seeing the bright red salmon headed up the creek to spawn.  So cool!  Though it did make me a little leery of bears potentially lurking around for the easy dinner, we didn't see any!