It's our last day to enjoy the great hiking in the mountains around Telluride, and we're taking the advice of fellow campers that really enjoyed the Wilson Meadow Trail. So we're up early, and on the trail covered with wildflowers above Trout Lake. But this hike would have a very unusual start this morning!
As we look down the highway, we see a brown silhouette coming from the direction of the lake, heading up the hill after crossing the road.
Mark whips out his phone to take a picture as the brown silhouette stops on the side of the hill.
At first we thought it was a young bear, and we were looking around for Mama bear to follow. But when we got this better look, we saw it was an adult bear on our trail first thing this morning.
Our bear was heading up-hill, and so are we. He headed into the forest beside us, and we assumed that was the last of our bear sightings for the day.
But as our trail took us closer to the trees, we saw movement in the shadows.
At times we could see the bear's back as it ambled through the brush. The long shaggy hair on its back was strikingly lighter than the dark head of this black bear.
Now that we know there is no Mama and baby bears, we aren't frightened at all. Black bears are usually docile, so it was fun to continue up the mountain beside the bear. It would often stop to dig and eat, and it wasn't concerned about us at all.
Only a few times could we see its face, as he acknowledged our presence.
Then it showed us its shaggy back again as it ambled deeper into the forest in search of more things to eat.
That bear sighting certainly made the first mile of the Wilson Meadow trail more exciting than we expected. Now it's time to get down to business and get some really steep hiking under our belts.
We are used to hiking up to lakes, and up to summits. But today we are hiking UP over the ridge . . .
so we can hike DOWN to the meadow. But once we topped that ridge, we were able to see Lizard Head Mountain in front of us at all times. If you see the mountain in both pictures above and below, you can't miss the knob on the top called Lizard head.
It took one more push up a wildflower section of the trail,
before we found ourselves in Wilson Meadow. We have wandered into another of God's wonders!
We kept taking pictures up close,
and pictures very far away trying to capture the size and majesty of this big meadow. Our campground friends that recommended this hike have done trails all over the world. She exclaimed that she had never seen such a beautiful place as Wilson Meadow!
Since this is our last mountain hike for a while, we stretched our hike by adding another mile by walking around the perimeter of part of the meadow.
Denisa spent her time sitting in the grass, taking pictures of tiny wildflowers that she had never seen before.
Then she found herself in the middle of a sea of these feathery purple blooms,
and found a hummingbird moth that was enjoying them even more.
All this hiking and picture-taking was being overseen by the watchful eyes of the lizard, on the top of lizard head mountain.
After taking way too many pictures in the meadow, it is time to head back up . . .
and then back down our trail towards the car we left close to Trout Lake.
We're still seeing beautiful specimens of flowers in spectacular shades of blue!
We finished up this 7.2-mile hike (with 1,709 feet elevation gain) as we neared Trout Lake where we started this morning. We kept looking for the black bear we left in the forest earlier, and we were a little disappointed that we didn't get to see him again on our return trip. 
This lake and the end of this hike are just two miles away from the Matterhorn campground where we have been blessed to live for the past week. It's been a great time in these mountains near Telluride, Colorado, and we'll be sad to leave them in the morning! We would say that this last hike to Wilson Meadows was good, but it's a great hike when it starts with a bear!
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