What do we do on our "Day-Off"?

Yesterday, we hiked over 13 miles, and hiked up the equivalent of 70 floors in elevation gain. We really deserve a day off! Normally, that includes sleeping late and hanging around the campground most of the next day after a big hiking day. So what did we do on our "day-off" today? Well, we needed some groceries, so we headed to the nearest town of Dubois, Wyoming, about 22 miles away. We also wanted to stop by the ranger office to get best advice for kayaking and hiking in this area. We had an encounter with the least friendly ranger ever, who told us to find it ourselves, and "If I told you about any hidden gems, they wouldn't be hidden, would they?" We had read about the Whiskey Basin Wildlife Habitat Area east of Dubois, and we decided to drive further and explore there on our day off. Without the ranger's advice, we didn't know which of the three lakes would be best for kayaking, but we decided to try the middle one--Ring Lake.

We weren't expecting much from this plain round lake in the middle of a sagebrush pasture. We like coves and trees, and the only interesting opening we saw was into the stream that fed into the lake. We tried paddling up the stream, but it was too shallow. It looks like this day-off kayak isn't going to be too exciting.

But then it happened. First, Mark caught sight of a nose above water, and we began chasing that nose.

Then we saw our first eagle of the "day-off," flying in the clouds above the water.

We saw a fight above the water, and watched until the two birds separated and we could get a good look at them. One was an osprey, perhaps defending his territory and his nest.

The other was a young bald eagle. It's always interesting to see these juveniles as their all-brown feathers start turning white on the head and tail. It's also about this time that their beaks and eyes change colors as well.

Even the dragon flies were putting on a show for us, as they made interesting horizontal patterns landing on the  lake grass.

Then we looked towards this evergreen tree, and could see that unmistakable profile of a heron in the branches on the right.

It's interesting how they can stretch out their necks like in the picture above, or tuck that long neck close to their body and change their profile completely. But what was more interesting, is that we realized his mate was on that same branch, as well as their nest. If you squint your eyes and look closely, you can even see their young herons in that nest.

Now we realized that the entire tree was a-flutter with herons and their long necks, all sitting over their nests. We had stumbled upon a heron nursery on our day-off.

We counted ten adult herons in the tree, but it was harder to count the young birds. If you look behind this bird, you can see a smaller, fluffier heron in the nest. The more accurate name for a tree like this is a "rookery" and we're delighted to find it on our day-off.

While we were watching the herons, we could also see this log out of the corner of our eye. We got a picture of the mother duck, resting on the end of the log.

But when we panned out, we could see this is a busy mother. We counted the ducklings on her log and came up with 13! We've never seen a single family of ducks with so many ducklings!

We tried to take a picture of the ducklings, but their fuzzy feathers just make for a fuzzy photo.

We were sitting in the kayak at this spot where water from the second lake flows into the first lake. From here we can see the heron rookery in front of us, the ducks on the log to the side, and what's that in the other tree?

That's the osprey nest, with its orange twine threaded throughout.

As we left the far side of the lake, our mother duck has led her little flock off the log. Does she look a little tired now that we know she is wrangling 13 little ducklings?

We certainly have had a lot of fun finding the wildlife here on Ring Lake. And to think, we first thought this would be a boring kayak trip around a plain little lake. The gray clouds are gathering, as we headed back to the pickup. We got a few sprinkles of rain on us while we got the boat dried off and loaded.

Many people make the drive out to the Whiskey Basin just to see the petroglyphs. Since this is our "day-off," we just did some drive-by photos. Can you see the petroglyphs?

We could have spent hours hunting through the rocks. We actually only found this one from the road because someone was looking at it. So we'll zoom in closer so you can see it too.

The real reason we made this drive out to the Whiskey Basin was for a very high-rated hike that starts at the end of that gravel road. Again, we're not expecting much from a hike starting in this dry pasture-land.

But we found a ribbon of water tumbling down the surrounding mountains that suddenly makes this area magical.

It's coming down the mountain at such a steep angle that it splashes ten feet high when it hits the rock in front of Mark.

The source of that water is our destination. After a steep hike on a warm afternoon, we finally topped the last hill to look down into Louise Lake.

We hiked almost three miles to get to the lake. That's longer than we expected to hike on our "day-off." Mark found him a chaise-lounge-like rock for a good long rest.

We ate our picnic lunch and rested for about an hour. We were waiting for those gray clouds to make way for some sunlight. We finally got enough sun to light up the second chamber of this lake that opens up after that narrow neck.

This would be a great mountain lake to kayak. It's days like this that we wish we had a pack-kayak, and we even mentioned it. So when we later saw a hiker with one of these light-weight kayaks (that fold up and will fit into a backpack), we were a little jealous that he'll get to boat past that narrow neck to see the rest of Lake Louise.

Our legs were rested enough to make the long hike back to the pickup. We stopped on the bridge to take a picture that showed how long and fast the water coming off of Lake Louise was running.

It was a 5.5 mile hike with 1,093 feet in elevation gain by the time we got finished. This was supposed to be a "day-off," but we have certainly seen many of God's wonders today. That includes the grand rock formations across the road as we pulled out of the Whiskey Basin.

We still needed to stop at the grocery store in Dubois for some milk and eggs, and we also stopped to do some things on the computer when we had a good phone signal in town. The sun was setting when we saw of herd of pronghorn as we finally headed home on our "day-off."

We left the motor home early this morning, and as we drove home this evening the sky was ablaze with a stunning sunset. We put in some over-time today on our "day-off," but we certainly enjoyed the kayaking, wildlife-viewing, and hiking we were blessed to do.