This week’s Friday Afternoon (hiking) Club took place on Monday morning… because that’s just how wildly unpredictable we are.
We set our sites on the Cecret Lake. No… I didn’t spell ’secret’ wrong. Some other weirdo spelled it wrong ages ago and it’s been driving people crazy ever since.
Especially me since, at one point, I had strongly considered becoming a high school teacher. Then I did my student teaching where I was forced to interact with real, live, high school kids.. and… well… say no more.
I’m NOT thinking about high school kids because I have an ounce of fondness for them. Quite the opposite! Oh, they’re cute and all ~ if you happen to be the parent of one of them ~ but I’m a Mom who survived those teenage years.
May I just say? ‘Lock ‘em up, throw away the key’ is not always a bad idea.
To get to Secret Lake you hike up and up and up a little bit more. You don’t really notice all the up because you’re traipsing through expansive fields of wildflowers every step of the way.
When we reached the actual ‘Cecret Lake,’ [Argh! That name drives me nuts!] we were confronted with hordes of teenagers.
On a Monday? How fair is that? When will we see the shift to 12 months, every year, kids in school? Because that would be good for the nation as a whole and especially me!
We walked to an out of the way giant rock where we could eat our lunch and observe the teens as we do monkeys in a zoo. (It’s really not all that different.)
Then, I looked down to see one enterprising teen rock-climbing his way to the top of our own personal boulder! As teenagers go, the kid was fairly well-trained. (Good job, Mom!) He said, “Thanks! I just wanted to see if I could do that!”
I was dying to be all sarcastic and demand: Do what? Spoil my lunch? But, I couldn’t. Because, you see, I’m only allowed to be a bitch once a day.
And, I’d already hollered at some poor Latvian tourist for picking the wildflowers…
Reason #9 for not picking those wildflowers: They are COVERED with bugs. Vicious, nasty, carnivorous, creepy crawlies that will eat you up from the inside out.
Okay, fine, maybe that’s stretching things a bit but I still wish you would just lay off picking the wildflowers. It doesn’t do me, or you, any good.
* Wildflower identification! Are you dying to know? Me, too!
From top photo to bottom photo:
- Damned if I know!
- Damned if I know.
- Damned if I know
- I just take the pictures. Perhaps you’re smart enough to identify them.
