On our huckleberry Sunday yesterday, we had no sundaes.
The plan, once we found a small patch up Jeru Creek Road in Upper Pack River, was to pick enough berries to stop off at the Samuels store for some vanilla ice cream, enjoy a sundae and freeze the rest.
One quart of huckleberries hardly satisfies that goal, so those we picked yesterday went into the freezer.
We will go another day with our pricey white berry buckets, purchased last week at the Naples Store.
We hope, on a future trip, that we'll find enough to enjoy those sundaes.
We even stopped at a patch along Pack River where Bill likes to fish and where my sisters and I picked berries to our hearts' content a few years ago---some of them while a bear climbed up and clung to a tree while we picked.
Yesterday's trip through the patch yielded about two berries from some bushes, none from most.
We're wondering why we are seeing so much bare huckleberry brush this year. Bill thinks it might be a lack of bees, or maybe a freeze at a crucial time in berry development.
This is the second time we've been skunked on our huckleberry pursuit, but we did find stumps.
Massive stumps.
Plus, the drive from one end of the Jeru Creek Road to the other was pretty but bumpy in spots.
Bill had to go into 4-wheel drive in a couple of spots, and it was touch and go in one washout where a big boulder took up space mere inches from obstructing our pathway.
After we'd driven a mile or so past that first and last real patch of the day, Bill said he might turn around.
"Go a little further," I suggested, with sincere hopes that we'd either get a nice view or find another patch of berries.
The views of individual peaks in the Selkirks were brief but still pretty.
And, the fact that only one other set of tracks appeared on the road guaranteed a true back-country experience, unlike the main Pack River Road where constant traffic has left a thick coat of dust on the foliage.
Throughout our Jeru Creek drive, the flowers and plants were bright, squeaky clean and eye catching.
The only real blemish in nature's gorgeous landscape appeared on a roadside curve where a good-sized fishing boat covered with graffiti apparently didn't make it up the mountain via Jeru Creek.
When we arrived at what I immediately dubbed Stump Park, we stopped and got out to admire the sheer size of those stumps of huge trees which were either cut after the Sundance Fire or maybe even decades before 1967.
They were something to behold, and it was obvious they provided a reason for travelers to set up camp in their midst.
I've always loved stumps, especially when they have unique and often artistic shapes and hints of times long past.
These which appeared next to the road and in lovely shaded areas stood out in my arsenal of great stump memories.
The wild ginger and other plants and trees around them or even growing out of them added some lovely natural accessories.
We may not of picked the mother lode of huckleberries, but our adventure through the Jeru Creek drainage yesterday was at times nail biting and always beautiful.
Stay tuned for Chapter No. 3 of "Empty Buckets in the Huck Patches."
Happy Monday.
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