Moose Lake

Ryan's parents have a house on Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced Ponderay-it means ear in french I think) in Hope, ID. It's a beautiful place and we love to go there when we get the chance. This last trip Ryan and I made it out to Moose Lake. Ryan's grandfather and grandmother would go fishing here a lot when they were younger. They would build a raft and then push out and fish.

It was fun to finally go and see it for myself. It's about a 1.5 hour drive on gravel roads to get there and then a 2 mile hike. As you can see from the pictures that lake was true to its name and I saw my first real live moose.That little black spot is a moose.

We watched him for a while and wanted to get a better vantage point, but the shore of the lake was very marshy. We settled down to watch from afar when he started walking around. He went deeper and deeper in the lake and the started swimming straight for us....that was fine for awhile, but when he got w/in about 100 yards we thought we should move from our shoreline perch. When we got up to move he stopped, perked his very large ears and looked surprised (yes, a moose can look surprised). He hadn't seen us. That didn't deter him. He moved up to within about 30 yards of where we had been sitting and started to graze.
They graze the bottom of the lake. It was pretty funny to watch. Head under...wait, wait, wait wait, until you think it's been way to long for him to hold his breath, then head up...munch, munch, munch, munch...head under....you get the idea. Here's a video to demonstrate. Sorry it's a little shaky.

I also had my first experience huckleberry picking. Ken (Ryan's dad) and Grandma Green came with us. I have to admit it's a lot more work than blackberry picking, there's lots of crouching involved and huckleberries are small! Not having to deal with thorns was nice though.

Anywho it was a great trip. :)