My 2D homies

[Jade]

My husband and I went camping this past weekend, and had a wonderful time. Our friend who owns the birdseed shop we visit (he used to work for the DNR) gave us a hot tip on a place in Pike National Forest to visit that borders a wilderness area. We were not disappointed. Taking photos is a new hobby of my husband's so I'm going to share some beautiful shots (most are his, some are mine)

When we first entered the park we were visited by a couple of hawks. Kile managed to get this awesome shot of one of them taking off:



They visited a few more times on our visit, but mostly soaring high overhead.

Here's another friend we made at our campsite: A gray jay!



Apparently these precocious little featherballs are also known as "Camp robbers", and this one displayed no fear of humans! Kile was thrilled because it came down so close to him when he asked ("come here!" -bounces down-)  and he got several good pictures, including this one them checking each other out.

Where we settled had some awesome old cabins, who knows how old





Butters had a great time, as always, though there were a bit too many pine needles at our first camp for him to hike much with us. He really enjoys the meadows.



Light through the trees -



The next morning I woke up to my husband completely losing his mind. Our friend the gray-jay came back, and once again responded to Kile's request that it "come here!" and it hopped down onto the log right next to him, about a foot away.



Omg so cute.

The clouds looked a bit ominous and rain was potentially in the forecast, and our spot was on a SKETCHY gravel road and we drive a tiny Kia sedan without any clearance, so we decided we should try to get out before the large gravel that we'd have to drive over got wet. Here's a picture of some flowers I took on the way out (there is no way to describe the mountain flowers here... I wish where we had gone had more meadows, but I've seen some mind-blowing meadows already)



As we were leaving, we noticed all the spots towards the front of the park were empty (and some of them were awesome). We had gotten past the scary part of the road so we went back to check out some of the other sites - they were all along a creek with tons of beaver ponds.

We pulled into one site and were admiring the huge beaver house/structure and all their dams at this cool little pond, when suddenly emerging from the forest....

(cont. next post due to image limit)