A great hike to The Scout

Bill spent the past week trying to organize a hike to The Scout. Finally, yesterday we managed to get our acts together and go. My sisters, Barbara and Laurie, along with their Blue Heeler Pita, accompanied us on this beautiful walk from Canuck Pass near the Canadian Border northeast of Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

The trail took us on a 4-mile trek to The Scout, a mountain where Bill had visited and placed a geocache a year or so ago. Laurie found the cache, and we all signed the log. We enjoyed a lunch near the cache, and while nibbling on chips and string cheese, I sat with half my body in Montana and half in Idaho. The views were nothing less than breath-taking.

It was Pita's first experience on a full-fledged mountain hike, and she passed with flying colors. Barbara figures she walked and trotted 16 miles as she continually went from the front to the back of the pack to check on everyone. Kiwi was quite pleased to have her doggie best buddy along, and I was quite pleased to enjoy the outing with my sisters.

Barbara took at least a hundred photos. One of the highlights of the day came when we called Annie who had just reached the summit of Mt. Pilchuck in the North Cascades. She had organized her hike with a bunch of Seattle-area geocachers, and she couldn't talk long because her group was hot on the trail of another cache, after having already found three. She did, however, take time to send us a couple of phone pictures from her perch, and later, we posed at our lunch spot for photos to send to Annie.

Bill was pretty amazed that technology could unite us all in places where years ago no communications existed except for crudely contrived telephone networks for Forest Service communication. The first picture shows Bill planting another geocache along the trail. Barbara thought it was an ideal spot, so we named the cache Barbara's Buckhorn Snag.

We have some sore muscles but great memories that far outweigh the aches and pains.