The Clagstone Meadows Birthday Hike!

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My baby turned seventeen Saturday.

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I mean, all parents have a moment where they look at their offspring and wonder where the heck the time went, and let's just say that this past Saturday was a big ol birthday reality slap to the noggin, because my baby is almost an adult! AHH!

Not that I am sad about that fact though, I am so excited to see what she goes out in the world and accomplishes, the kid is super driven. Heck, she will graduate high school next year and be a certified CNA and already have half of her nursing degree done, at eighteen years old.

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Yep. Super proud.

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That said, her brother had a track meet on her birthday, and track meets last most of the day, especially big weekend invitationals, so we decided to have her party on Sunday. But, I wanted to do something special with her on her big day, so when she said she wanted to go on a hike, well, I knew where to go.

My son's meet was in a neighboring town, Priest River, Idaho. It's lovely little logging town perched on the conjunction of the Priest and Pend Oreille rivers. One of my favorite (and close to home) hiking areas is on between my farm and Priest River, so I told my squeaky that we could hike in Clagstone Meadows and I would take her to this new coffee shop in Priest River on the way to the meet after our hike

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She liked this plan.

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And that was how we found ourselves tromping through the dew covered grass this past Saturday morning. Clagstone Meadows Conservation Area is a massive chunk of logging company land that is open to the public for non-motorized use. It's a super fun place to wander through, there's a myriad of old, overgrown logging roads and trails galore.

And yesterday, there were some wildflowers coloring the landscape, Squee!

As I have only hiked there once, I couldn't remember which fork to take to go towards the view I wanted to show my girl, so our first foray was down a shady track to the hidden hay farm meadow. Last year, when I hiked there last, I stumbled upon the secret hay farm while they were baling the glorious future animal fodder. It is such a picturesque bit of scenery. Plus, it's fun just to burst out of the woods into a view like this:

After remembering where I was and enjoying the view, we turned and wandered back towards the track I had intended to take, after having a pleasant morning conversation with an absolutely gigantic woodpecker. He really was an amiable sort, and hopped around branches right above our head, preening and showing off his beautiful shades of grey plumage.

Later, as we hiked down the right logging road, I got to spend some quality time in some of that great mother/daughter conversating that happens when you are doing something awesome yet there's no tasks to tend to. We talked about her future, her party, prom, you know, offspring and parent bonding stuff.

It was a good time.

Now, we didn't go all the way up the hill like I had wanted to, as we had to get to my son's meet, but we did find a lovely little bluff to scramble up and behold some beautiful North Idaho Boreal forest scenery from.

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We also got screamed at by a very ill-mannered squirrel. I should have brought a couple of my cat contingent with me, they know how to handle a grouchy nut and seed hoarder!

On the way back we found a little grove of Larch (Tamarack) trees that had been planted by the timber company, Larch trees are conifers that lose their needles every fall and grow them back in the spring like deciduous trees. I love them so much, especially in the spring when their little needles are starting to bud out!

All in all, we rambled about five miles, and it was a glorious five miles indeed!

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's now dry of its dew coating from being gracelessly dropped on the forest floor during the hike iPhone.

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