Hiking to Circle All Peak

These added on top of my words......but LOOK at the color!  Wow!

Flowers, flowers everywhere

Dad and Vonicia and I took a hike for Family Home Evening.  Our last hike to Dog Lake we thought was amazing for the flowers.  This trail had flowers taller than we were everywhere.  It was a very steep trail......Like Vonicia said, "2 1/2 miles up, and 1 mile down!!!"  It was to a place called Circle Overlook.  Standing on top, you could overlook the entire canyon 360 degrees.  Beautiful.  [It was only a 3.9 mile hike, but very steep--took us 2 1/4 hours to go up, and 1 hour to come down!]  We do stop for lots of pictures..........Here are a few of them:

 Von up on top!

 We climbed high, fast

 The views were spectacular

 Unbelievable, but this hike had MORE flowers than the last!

Von and I on top of the world

Giant flowers

Little purple trail markers

Bright blue

Pink

Yellow

The trail was so overgrown with flowers (bluebells here) we felt like we need a machete

Lush

We took the Butler Fork trail to the Circle Overlook

Flowers taller than Von

Me playing around with setting on my camera....great closeup of an interesting flower

Millions of bluebells everywhere

We had the whole 360 degree view from up top

Gorgeous

Dad eating trail mix at the top

Unbelievable

These were growing right out of the rocks!

Plus the beautiful little stream that was our companion most of the way

Just look at that gorgeous pathway

More from the Dog Lake Hike (post below)

 Tons of sweet peas. 

 Is there anything more sweet and delicate?

 Flowers, flowers, flowers

 This is a repeat of above, but blogger won't let me remove 'just one' picture, so look again!  It's pretty!

 The variety was amazing

 White columbine, pretty enough to frame

 Almost blinding yellow.  Below is the beautiful stream, again blogger isn't cooperating with a caption ability! 

Beautiful butterflies were flitting around, and the birds were singing.  Surprisingly, mainly robins.

There were dozens of different kinds of wildflowers

Many of them GIANT sized

I loved this:  A puffball of a flower.

We wanted to hike the 'circle' around, but got a bit lost.  One lady had a map and said, "Take a picture", so I did.

 On the way out of the canyon search and rescue were there rescuing a couple that got lost!  Glad it wasn't us!

Huge variety of shapes and sizes of leaves and flowers.

So many flowers, they even grew down the trail

Our hike to Dog Lake from Big Cottonwood Canyon

Loved the white trunks of the birch trees in contrast to the greenery of the undergrowth

Last week we hiked 8/10 of a mile from Dog Lake from Mill Creek, this time we went from the Big Cottonwood Canyon side of things.  Beautiful country.

Green and Lush

Thick undergrowth

Here's the 'bump on the log' from the log that is in the hole at the bottom of the sea

Gorgeous and colorful wild flowers EVERYWHERE

This 'undergrowth' as as tall as me!

Tons of daisies

And wild roses

Beautiful vistas

Fields of flowers

Unbelievable beauty (the camera doesn't do it justice)

Every color, size, shape:  gorgeous

These were HUGE.  Some were taller than dad.

Loved these little flowers growing up between the huge leaves

Look at the top left for a very big bumblebee!

Dad pausing on the trail

Flowers everywhere, even 'underfoot'

Varieties of flowers changed the higher we climbed

These were a soft purple in color..something like foxglove, but different

This section of our watershed water was surrounded by blue flowered bushes

Did you know that the path of the iron rod is surrounded by FLOWERS?  It IS.  Cling tight!

I love the stands of birch trees

A mound of happy little flowers

Pleasant to hike to the sound of a gurgling brooklet

These were a brighter blue than the picture shows.  Gorgeous.

These are 'rare', but they are all over the hills this year.  Sweet to suck the nectar as a little treat!

So pretty, every step of the way.

Like the books says, "Dog Lake is bigger than a pond, but smaller than a lake"  Looked 'puddleish' to me!

Another view of dog lake

Hillside of flowers and birch

What a trail to hike down!!

Loved how the tree grew out of the way of the path!