Today’s weather is perfectly cloudless and still. And the morning was cool when I left for the mountains at 8.

Maybe I should have given priority to the article that’s due today and I have yet to write. But instead I gave priority to where my heart and soul called. I’m glad I did.

I didn’t go far. I drove up Boulder Canyon to the mountain town of Nederland, nestled between Barker Reservoir and the Indian Peaks at 8,200 feet.
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If my resistance training instructor hadn’t cancelled the session today, I wouldn’t have made it to the mountains. That was good, because the hike far exceeded my expectations.

But if my instructor would have let me know in advance that there wasn’t a class today, I could have been hiking in the morning. I went anyway, although I didn’t get to the trailhead at the Wild Basin area of Rocky Mountain National Park until after 1.

Generally, it’s not a good idea to get to the mountains so late on a summer day. If it doesn’t rain in the afternoon, it is usually overcast. In fact, that was the weather prediction.
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No mountain lions prowled their namesake trail today. And I didn’t see any burros to pack my gear. But this four-mile loop trail in Golden Gate Canyon State Park showed me a profusion of wildflowers. In particular I never saw so many paintbrush(es?) and yellow stonecrop(s?).

A wonderful hike! Much better than I expected this late in the season. I thought that I might be too late for the wildflowers on this trail, since I climbed only from about 7,000 to 8,000 feet, and thought the peak bloom today would be higher.
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My first guess was that they ran out of names when they called it Mud Lake. It doesn’t have more mud than other lakes. If fact, I found out today that it used to be called Muskee Lake. I have no idea when they changed it from a perfectly good name, but the reality is much more beautiful than its current moniker.

I returned to Mud Lake for the first time in a couple of years today. Thinking about my previous trip there always saddened me, because it was one of the last places I ever went with Catherine. We went there with our big Akita, Ember, when Catherine couldn’t walk more than the few steps from the parking lot to the lake.
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Last August I started preparing to backpack in the Rockies by buying a backpack, tent, sleeping bag, and pad. Karen and I had a short and successful trial run with my new equipment in March, but yesterday and today was my first backpacking trip to any mountains in a quarter of a century.

Finally, everything clicked for an overnight camping trip on Thursday and Friday. I didn’t have any appointments except to post an article at HealthCentral.com, and my producers did that for me after I sent her a draft of it on Wednesday. I’m feeling great, and the weather prediction was good too.

In fact, the weather was superb, especially yesterday and last night. It was as clear as I ever remember seeing it and totally without any wind for the duration of my trip.
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Beaver Trail is short, only two miles roundtrip, but was certainly sweet today. Continuing my search for Colorado wildflowers of the late spring, I was in the right place, at the right time and day, and the right year to find orchids.

Two days ago on the Ceran St. Vrain Trail I found four fairy slipper orchids, and was deighted at that. Today I found more than 400 of them. At this season, wildflowers are in bloom at the elevation of these trails. Ceran St. Vrain Trail climbs from 8,000 feet to 8,700 feet, while Beaver Trail stays right about 8400 feet.

Endangered and rare, these orchids lay dormant last year, a park ranger told me. Another ranger suggested that I hike the Beaver Trail, when I asked him where I could find wildflowers. They are at their peak today.
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When I hiked the Ceran St. Vrain Trail on May 20, I didn’t see a single wildflower in the first two miles and only a few along the third mile of the hike. I was too early for the flowers that bloom here in late spring.

Today my timing was right. I took 134 pictures, mostly of wildflowers. I don’t remember ever taking so many in one day.

I came back mostly in hopes of seeing the beautiful fairy slipper orchid (Calypso bulbosa). This spectacular — and endangered — orchid grows in the moist, shady evergreen forest of the Rocky Mountain foothills like along the trail I hiked today.
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For the fourth day in a row John and I hiked. But today was different.

We went with John’s friend, Becky. It was Becky who made all the difference.

The three of us went first to the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve, which is 33 miles north of Santa Cruz on the crest of the Santa Cruz Mountains. “This preserve has been identified as one of the five best places in the Bay Area to see wildflowers,” according to the trail guide. It certainly was today. That’s because most of the hike was through fields rather than trees.

We say poppies by the thousands, which particularly delighted me. Not only is the golden poppy California’s state flower, but it is showy and beautiful — and I hadn’t seen any since I moved from California four years ago. We also had good, albeit cloudy, views of the South Bay.
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The hike that John and I took today was longer in mileage and time as well as steeper than yesterday’s hike. John thought it was harder than yesterday. But I thought it was easier.

Finally I figured out why. It was because only when we got to the trailhead did I realize that I had forgotten to change from my sandals to my boots. We were hours from John’s home — far too far away to turn back and get them.

It turned out that since my sandals are so much lighter than my boots that they made the day much easier for me. These are really special sandals by Merrill that my friend Barry recommended to me on the basis of his experience with them. They have a great sole for hiking in the woods, and he once told me that he hikes with them. I already was wearing them everyplace, even instead of the slippers I used to wear around the apartment. Today I liked hiking with them so much that I will wear them on our hike tomorrow.
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My friend John drove up from his home near Santa Cruz to meet me at the Serrano Hotel where I was staying in San Francisco at noon yesterday just as the 68th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, which I was attending, ended. I wrote one article for each of the five days of the convention:

ADA: Day 1 at http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/17/30209/ada-day-1
ADA: Day 2 at http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/17/30266/ada-day-2
ADA: Day 3 at http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/17/30306/ada-day-3
ADA: Day 4 at http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/17/30396/ada-day-4
ADA: DAY 5 at http://www.healthcentral.com/diabetes/c/17/30479/ada-day-5

I really enjoyed this huge meeting with 20,000 other people and loved San Francisco this time. But the fun really began when John arrived.
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