Praise God for Louis's successful sinus surgery!

Louis's extensive Septoplasty, turbinate reduction & sinus surgery is now past. Louis came through yesterday's surgery with flying colors & is now camping out in our kitchen in a lounge chair. Ari has spread out along side him the last few painful hours. Louis's nose is quite swollen as we expected & we keep changing the drip pads below his nose when they become saturated with his bloody discharge. He's had only one bad bout with nausea. This afternoon the lower nasal packs will be removed during his post-op. appointment, which should reduce some of the nasal pain. The sinus part of the surgery has left him with a terrific sinus headache, which the Lortabs only take the edge off of. The upper packing in the sinuses won't come out for over a week. As a result, Louis has taken a week off work to just lay around & recover. Thanks for your prayers!

Jewel Basin Hike - Part 1

A couple of weeks ago I promised to share some of the photos of the Jewel Basin hike. Five of the Hallelujah Hikers arrived at the trailhead around 8:00 a.m., so the beginning of our hiking was in early morning light filtering through the trees. As the light hit the fully blossumed Bear Grass, it made the blooms glow. They almost appeared lit from the inside.

The mountain slopes looked like a garden with so many Asters, Arnica, Indian Paintbrush & other wildflowers in bloom amidst the Bear Grass.

This flower was new to me. It's the Orange Agoseris, sometimes dubbed as the Orange Mountain Dandelion since its stem holds milky liquid just like the common Dandelion.

Further up the slopes, we came upon these flowers with stems that looked like they had been braided. Guess what. This is a variety of Indian Paintbrush!

After a couple of hours of strenuous hiking, we arrived at the rim of Jewel Basin. This far brought back memories of last year's hike. This year we planned to not only hike the ridge all the way to the summit of Mount Aeneas, but to hike down into the basin & back out again. A lot of steep & fairly difficult hiking.

This photo shows the ridgeline that we hiked along to reach the summit.

We began to be rewarded for our difficult trek by running into mountain goats. This was the first one we sighted since he walked right across the trail in front of us.

Jewel Basin Hike - Part 2

As Judy & I neared the summit of Mount Aeneas, a mountain goat posed for us. He was standing almost on top of the 1939 metal plate that marked the summit.

We saw many mountain goats this year; several of them coming almost within touching distance before veering off down the steep mountain banks to go around us.

This photo of me almost at the summit of Mt. Aeneas, shows the Flathead Lake valley view we saw on the south side of the ridge trail. The metal plate marking the summit, that the goat had stood near, is just in front of my left hand.

As we descended from the summit of Mt. Aeneas, we could see Birch Lake & several smaller lakes just to the southeast of the Jewel Basin ridge.

These yearling mountain goats allowed us to come quite close as they ascended on the snowbanks & we descended on the trail toward the Jewel Basin floor.

We dipped our feet in one of the Picnic Lakes inside Jewel Basin. The snow melt made this lake so cold that our feet tingled within a few seconds.

As we climbed back out of the basin & then descended toward the trailhead, we were once again surrounded by blooming Beargrass at its peak. A couple of Indian Paintbrush blossums were sprinkled here & there, as well.

Other than the glorious Beargrass blossums, my favorite flora on this hike were the tiny Alpine Forget-Me-Nots.

We also saw a few rabbits & chipmunks during the hike. Our focus was on the mountain goats because they are more rare, but I love seeing the antics of these fauna too.