A Ride Into the Mountains

We took a long ride into the forest behind us today.  It was a real adventure.  Here are a few of the highlights...

We took Bear along the main road near us that heads up the mountain, and shortly after heading into the woods, came across a beautiful Doe.  She must have been grazing on blackberries, and of course quickly ran off the trail and into the woods as we approached.  She was elegant.  But she stood not too far away, observant and contemplative.  Just stunning.  I stood there and spoke to her, telling her I was her friend; just respectfully curious.  And clicked away...

This first photo is the Doe using a closeup lens...

 
 This second shot is when I first found her in the woods, and just clicked the shutter...

It truly is magnificent to see wildlife in it's natural setting, undisturbed.  Makes me wonder if the mysterious guest we had in our woods might have been this Doe...the place we spotted her was no more that 1/2 mile directly up the mountain (as the crow flies, or the Doe goes) from our place.  Mountain Man is inspired to put his Critter Cam up in that area again...we shall see what we shall see!

We also came across 2 wild turkeys, though they moved too quickly for me to catch them on my camera, though I did try!  They were quite large and clucked loudly as they ran from us.  Beautiful creatures!

We reached the top of the mountains, and I found myself mesmerized with my breath taken away as I looked about.  Here are three pics that could make a panorama...the dirt you see in the 3rd shot is because they are logging the forest there, which is really what we wanted to go investigate...we were relatively happy with what we found, as they did not remove every tree that was there.

 
To give you a different perspective, this is the view from the road that I walk to our mailbox, looking up...

...hard to imagine that this is what I see looking up, and the 3 pics above are what you see when you look down from that same spot!  I would never have believed it if I had not been there myself.  Interestingly, it took us about an hour to get from our place (on Bear, our ATV) to the spot with the spectacular view.  Lots of long winding trail roads to get there, up and around, around and down, up and down and around and around...

We also picked lots of fresh, ripe wild blackberries (blackberry jam in the making) and awesome wild  mushrooms (had them with dinner, yummy!).  And we came across a cool wasp's nest (that's the only pic I have for this portion of our day)...It was a great day!

Life is good, I am grateful, mountain life is awesome!!!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise