It was easy to get up early this morning, because our brains were still in Mountain time, even though our clocks were showing Pacific Time. We were up early enough to see the early sun turning the Ruby Mountains into the ruby red shades that the locals love. In all our travels, we had never heard of the Ruby Mountains before this summer, and we couldn't wait to see them up close.
We started the morning in the flat nondescript desert landscape of Elko, Nevada. But when we drove up the nicely paved road into Lamoille Canyon, we started seeing the Ruby mountains rise around us. What a big change of landscape in just a few miles! We were going on a little two-mile hike up to Lamoille Lake on this beautiful blue sky day. How many miles do you think this two-mile hike would really take us? Keep that estimate in mind, and we'll compare notes at the end of the blog.
We arrived to find that they were repaving the trail head parking lot, and we would need to park about 0.7 miles back down the road. So we started our day with some pavement hiking. That's not bad--that just brings us up to 2.7 miles.
We decided to make this into a loop hike, so that will add a little to our 2-mile hike. We started out on the Stock Trail toward Lamoille Lake this morning.
It got steep in a hurry, and it wasn't long until we got good views of the mountains around us. 
We started at an elevation of 8,644 feet and temperatures in the 40s this morning. We were glad for the sunshine and its extra warmth--that's something you don't usually hear on a hike in July.
The wildflowers were out in force. We were used to seeing purple columbines in the mountains, so we really enjoyed the yellow and ruby red version we were seeing in the Ruby Mountains.
We knew we were getting close when we found the water that flows out of Lamoille Lake falling down the mountain.
We had completed 2.7 miles when we found Lamoille Lake!
But of course we had to hike around it to see the lake from all its angles. It's bigger than the pictures make it appear. Can you see Denisa in the picture below?
Probably not, so she's circled in red in the picture below.
All this hiking around and taking pictures was adding to our hiking total. We were up to 3.1 miles already.
We only saw one other hiker this morning--a person that told us that after seeing Lamoille Lake we should continue up to Liberty Pass for some beautiful views. So we took that advice and headed up . . .
and up over the lake . . .
towards the saddle between the two mountains.
That would add another 1.6 miles to our total--and lots more elevation gain.
But we found some more unique wildflowers that love this high elevation and the lingering winter moisture.
We were so high that our trail was covered in snow close to the pass.
But we eventually made it to Liberty Pass at an elevation of 10,400 feet. We were glad that we got the advice to continue to the pass, and now our total was 4.6 miles on the trail.
We met our second group of hikers, and their advice was to continue just a little past the pass, for a peek at Liberty Lake.
We were hiking on some steep rocky ledges for those nice views on this beautiful blue sky day.
If we hiked just a little further, we could get an even better view of Liberty Lake. That brought today's hike up to a nice round 5.0 miles, and seemed a good place to turn around.
Now we had to hike back up-hill to get back to Liberty Pass, and the views heading back to the pickup. We were at 5.4 miles.
That would take us back through the snow, and to the tiny arctic flowers that live in the tundra. While they look like a big bouquet, you can see that they're barely the size of a hand.
It was a nice down-hill walk back to Lamoille Lake.
We had this beautiful place all to ourselves, and it felt nice to soak our tired feet in that ice cold water.
We're 7.3 miles into this hike and our feet appreciated the cold water bath. The last time we sent a picture of a beautiful mountain lake to our family, our daughters-in-law said they would love to jump in and take a swim if they were there.
So in honor of his daughers-in-law, Mark jumped in and took a swim. You can see the snow goes right to the water's edge, and he confirmed that the water was as cold as snow.
We were going back to the pickup, but this a loop hike had new things to see on the way back. We were heading back on the Dollar Lakes Trail.
Some of the Dollar Lakes were bigger than others, but they all had mountain backdrops . . .
with a bit of snow still remaining on those mountains in July. . .
and wildflowers enjoying the moisture at the shores of the lakes.
What's the cost of seeing yet another Dollar Lake?
Priceless! We have wandered into many more of God's wonders on this little two-mile hike!
After we ran out of lakes to entertain us, we still had another two miles to get back to the trailhead. But we enjoyed the views as we headed to lower elevations and back into Lamoille Canyon.
We were at 9.5 miles when we got back to the trail head, where the heavy equipment was making fast work of this paving project.
We were so impressed with this Lamoille Canyon Scenic Byway even though few people seem to know about it.
After the trail head, we had another 0.7-mile highway walk to get to our pickup. We met a couple finishing up a four-day hike on the Crest Trail that had an even longer walk to their vehicle. So we gave them a ride because their feet were more tired than ours. We finished the day with 10.2 miles on this beautiful day in the Ruby Mountains. Was that the number you estimated at the beginning of this blog?
This area was as pretty as some national parks we have visited, and we only saw a handful of groups on the trail all day. When we mentioned to our camping host that it could be a national park, she said, "Shhh! We don't want the crowds. So don't tell anyone!" So don't tell anyone that they had great roads, nice parking, charged no fees, and there were no crowds here in the Ruby Mountains. And we highly recommend a little two-mile hike up to the lake--that might grow to 10.2 miles because it was such a beautiful place.
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