Fish Lake
Today we left in the morning to drive to Fish Lake. We have never been and Lily and I were so excited to check it out. On the way down, we listened to an amazing podcast I found about the Pando Forest. Usually Lily is the one finding amazing stuff to listen to in the car (her last hit was Hemmingway stories to listen to in Florida). I was glad I could contribute on this front for once! On the podcast we learned that at fish lake, the Aspens and Conifers fight against each other for survival. Lately, the Aspens haven’t been doing so well for 3 reasons. 1. Human activity like roads, campgrounds etc is a nuisance to the aspens. 2. The killing off of natural predators like bears and wolves a hundred years ago has lead to a surplus population of mule-dear that is eating all the baby aspen and 3, the lack of fires in the last hundred years (when humans have been diligent and capable of stopping forest fires), has hurt the aspen, because aspen thrive in fire. They have a relatively wet bark (that is even a bit green and can photosynthesize) so they don’t burn well, and when they do burn, the shoot up tons of new baby trees in the area that was burned, and because of their interconnected root systems, they can send nourishment to those new trees, even bringing them water from miles away, passing water through the roots. Speaking of interconnected roots, the Pando Aspen forest (which we drove through and camped in) is the largest and oldest living organism on the earth (could be 50,000 years old). It’s the largest living organism because all the trees in the forest are clones and for the most part connected by the same root system. Pando is dying because of the reasons mentioned above. We also learned that aspen leaves quake (making a beautiful rustling sound) because their stems are flat instead of round. Here is the sound of aspens from our hike later in the day:
Once we arrived in Fish Lake, we had lunch at the Fish Lake Lodge. It was yummy and the kids got ice cream!
Then we set off on a hike to Pelican point (where Pelicans stop during their migration, but we didn’t see any) and also just followed the trail along the lake.
Weather started to get a little rough when we arrived at Pelican point which was on a high mountain plateau. Lily wisely suggested we go lower so we then went to a lower trail that went around the lake. We followed it for a little over a mile each way. Ammon was scared of lightening and even hugged a tree telling the tree to “be safe”. But then the weather cleared up, and we had the most unbelievable second half of our hike. Literally one of the prettiest and happiest hikes we’ve ever been on. We even sang happy birthday to Clarissa and let her blow out a massive dandylion (or whatever it was):
Of course others wanted a turn 🙂
After all we learned from our podcast, it was really fun to notice things in the forest like the age of the trees (young trees mean the forest will have a future) as well as the struggle between the conifers and the aspen:
After the hike we set up camp and I heated up the stew that I stayed up late making the night before.
It was an absolute hit, everyone LOVED it!
And Clarissa and Ammon were very cute playing badmitten
Clarissa and Ammon told Lily about candy world:
Then we all went to bed. Our view was unbelievable. We saw trees before it got completely dark, and when it got completely dark our view of the stars was breathtaking. Poor Lily didn’t sleep very well (as in barely at all).
