Sunday Gulch on a Tuesday

Tuesday 8/7

Back to the lake again, this time the Sunday Gulch hike….the best one yet.  The lake water seeps through the fissures behind Nils in this photo below and form the brook that flows through the gulch.

I've been thinking since we got here that the rock formations around the lake remind me of the Ents in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, those enormous trees with the solemn craggy faces and the deep voices.  I kept thinking that at any moment the cracks and fissures might transform into mouths and noses and eyes and come alive.  Here's one I saw as we started our hike:

 

Our first hour was spent following the babbling water through the gulch, climbing down and down and down over and rocks and boulders.  The steepest parts of the path had  metal railings welded into place which helped a lot, as the footing was a bit treacherous at times (I came close to slipping at one point and gave Nils a big adrenaline rush).  But it felt like a good adventure that we would survive to tell about. 

There were flowers of all kinds growing along the trail--purple, yellow, white, pink….black-eyed Susans, rose hips everywhere.  Orange butterflies overlaid with a delicate lacey black design followed us as we made our way.  Mica was sparkling in the sunshine with every step.  One 15-foot section  of the dirt path was covered in dime-sized pieces of mica as if it had spilled out of a gnome's sack of treasures.   The laws of physics must be obeyed, and what went down and down and down had to eventually go up and up and up.  Which it did.  After 2-1/2 hours of our labors, we were hot, sweaty and ready for a cooling-off swim.  Conveniently, our hike began and ended right on Sylvan Lake.  Nils stripped down to his shorts and swam across at the first opportunity. He climbed up onto a little rock island and jumped in with a splash.  I walked around the lake with the backpack to our truck and changed into my bathing suit to join him. 

Geronimo!

Splash!

Yes, that is me in the water

Some of the more observant among you may have noticed that I am wearing the same shirt three days in a row.  Yes, it's true.  It's currently my hiking shirt and I wash it out daily to wear again the next time.  Our RV is well-equipped but doesn't exactly have a washing machine.

Oh, and I managed to snap a picture (finally) of just a little of the biker action at Lake Sylvan:

  
And Nils just found this photo of downtown Sturgis during the rally, which is more representative of the vast numbers of motorcycles that have been motoring past our campsite every day since we got here.

This picture is worth a thousand motorcycles......

P.S. from Sylvan Lake

Someone else also calls Site 1E his home...a cheeky little squirrel who hops around and under our RV and then climbs up nearby trees and chatters at us for ignoring him.   He got so desperate this evening that he actually tried to jump through our screen door!  I think that he must have heard through the squirrel grapevine that relatives of Inga Ahbel were in Site 1 and was hoping for a handout.  You might not know that Inga feeds shelled peanuts to all of the lucky squirrels she encounters.  The ones who frequent her backyard and the size of large gophers.  Or maybe a small cocker spaniel.  Anyway, they're enormous and look big enough to take out your average housecat.  The teensy little Sylvan Lake squirrels can only wish with longing that they had a benefactress like Inga.