War Eagle Mountain!

Sam had such a good time on the last camp-out, he decided to pick another place to go see. The destination today: War Eagle Mountain!!! His original plans were to take Collin and Kaitlynn for the afternoon, but KK was playing with a friend and Collin decided he didn't want to go. So Sam decided he would go by himself for a few hours. He got his stuff together and left, and 5 minutes later drove back, WITH OUR BABYSITTER! He saw her at the park and asked if she was free for a few hours, brought her home and asked me to go with him.

Don't EVER accuse me of not being spontaneous!! :-) Took me five minutes to organize a QUICK supper for everyone ( thank GOODNESS for Chef-boy-Ardee!!! ) :-) . Make a list of instructions for Collin, put on my sneakers, grab some water, and off we went!

A few hours later, and one or two wrong turns on gravel roads, we reached the VERY top! 8,041 feet high on the peak of the mountian. Sam had rented a GPS machine from the outdoor center here on base and was having fun playing with it! SO we ALWAYS knew our elevation and exactly how far we were from home.

Here is the rover looking out over the peak! WAR EAGLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is Sam, at the very top. IT WAS SO WINDY!!!!!!!!
Here he is catching his Auburn hat before it blows away! It was like we the only people in the world. Besides the wind, there was no other sound. We could see for miles! We were actually looking into Oregon.
Here Sam decided to walk down the mountain and touch the snow. THe wildflowers were in bloom everywhere! Purple and red and white and yellow; with patches of snow and the view, it was just GORGEOUS!
Here you can tell he has gotten an idea. He shouted up that he wanted to throw a snowball at me in the middle of July!
Up he comes with a real snowball in his hand!
He did throw it at me, but it landed at my feet.
Here is one of the MANY streams and creeks we had to cross. This mountain used to be a gold mining haven! Old mines were EVERYWHERE! On some, you could still see broken pieces of track sticking out. Some of the names were Freedom mine, and After thought mine. Old rotten timber covered openings, left over rusty equipment rotted in the sun. I could just imagine getting all their equipment up here with horse and buggy and digging into this mountain. We explored an old cemetary dated back to 1837. There were a LOT of unmarked graves there, I imagine they were miner graves.
On some of the hills, it looked like the trail just disappeared into the sky!
One of the beautiful wildlife specimans we saw! Birds and butterflies and rabbits and other animals EVERYWHERE!
Just as you get back to the base entrance, here is the view of the mountain range.
Here is the same view, but I highlighted War Eagle Mountain. The yellow spot is where we were.
And that is it! We were gone for 5 hours and had a GREAT time. Sam should have planted a mini-Auburn flag on the summit! :-)