We love you, girlfriend.
Our campground, Manzanita Lake, was excellent. The visitors center was an easy bike ride away and so was the lake itself. We found geese and a mother mallard with ten ducklings, but the best was the muskrat. We enjoyed watching her swim and work and anger a duck on a couple of different occasions. The strangest site we encountered was a bat being chased in circles over the water by a trio of butterflies. I promise you, that's not the talk of five months spent inhaling pine bark and diesel fumes, we really did witness such a thing. And yes, we are positive it was a bat. Had I been less stupefied I might have thought to shoot a picture.
Speaking of things I got no pictures of, we hiked through a lava tube. That's what happens (the tube, not the hiking) when the outside of a lava flow cools while the inside keeps flowing. It was really cold (47 degrees F year round) and dark (flashlights required) and I found the part called "Collapsed Section" a tad bit unnerving. ("We'll, this has been fun! Sorry we can't stay! Gotta go thaw some chicken!" *sprints toward cave opening*)
I use a lot of parentheses when I get nervous.
Okay, so we can laugh a little...
All that great hiking and ferret-petting and snowballing caused us to work up solid appetites so we spent three evenings testing and perfecting a new s'more recipe that we named for Lena. I'm not giving it away just yet. You'll have to stay tuned for a future post when we shall unveil some true camping delicacies.
And trust us when I say there will be none that feature raisins.
-Jenni