Hiking the Alpine Lakes Wilderness

Dante and I headed for the trails again this morning, this time seeking a bit more of a challenge we headed further into the forest until we hit the Alpine Lakes Wilderness where we parked the car (note to self: Sebring is NOT an off-road vehicle...repeat...) and hiked for about two hours (little over four miles) into Petes Lake. It was an amazing trek, another great thing about being up here during the week is that there are very few visitors and even fewer on remote trails such as these, we ran into one group on our way in but the rest of the day it was just me, the little black-trail-concurring beast, and a lot of trees...




Until at last we reached the lake...


We stopped here for a bit until I could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance, and then we headed for home before the rumble began to roar, and we had great timing because we'd no sooner reached the trailhead when the rain began to fall. I did make a quick stop along our way back to take this pic, and if it looks like I'd grabbed Dante as he was running by for the photo-op you're right, I did, while programming the camera self timer he sat still as a statue, but as luck would have it the one thing he can not abide being still for came along just as I made my way into the shot, a bird, so he was basically mid-leap when I grabbed him up and "click". He still hasn't forgiven me for making him miss what was most certainly a sure thing catch of the day (we won't mention the hundreds of birds that were not caught despite some rather amazing efforts all day long).
That grin on my face, can be explained by a little term I call hiker-delusionus, my face was smiling and my legs were screaming (something like "this is hour 3 1/2 you idiot, what were you thinking, you don't even like to walk to work!"). But screaming legs aside, we're both merrily exhausted in only the way that hiking can offer, never has someone been so enthusiastic to arrive back to the car, sweaty, dirty, muddy, scraped up and sore and automatically thinking ahead to all the trails yet to be tackled :-)