In search of wildflowers

It was early June and I was ready for a longer hike after my recovery from surgery.  I always like to see a new place so we headed south to Fish Lake and Echo Basin hoping to see some wildflowers.










Fish lake was great!  We had our picnic lunch here and strolled through a piece of history.










This site has an old homestead and wagon road on it.  It was fun to poke around and imagine the pioneer days.










There was an old forest service building as well, and hiking up the wagon road we came to a pioneer woman's grave.  She died in the winter in childbirth stuck in a snowstorm. 










There was still a Trillium here.  I had missed the short trillium season due to surgery, so I was excited to find one!










We spent a little more time among the historical buildings and then drove to echo basin for a bit of a climb in search of wildflowers.










The hiking book I was referring to said Echo Basin should be hike able in early May so I figured the wildflowers would just be starting after the snow melt.   We got our first indication that something was wrong when there was a huge tree being cleared from the forest service road.  The worker let us through but said there was another tree about a mile from the trailhead.










We decided to go ahead and hike the mile and head up.  The road was lovely and we did see some wildflowers and streams while hiking up the forest service road.










The trail was narrow through a beautiful forest.  Unfortunately it was also snow covered :-)










Amy really enjoyed the snow at first but eventually did not want to walk in it anymore.  We continued up for as long as we were able with her.










We got to a large open meadow covered in snow.  The few very small and struggling flowers we did see were hearty survivors!










Sarah gave me quite a hard time about the "wildflower hike" but it was quite a memorable adventure!