So last week I took a few days off and when I take a “few days off” it means that eventually, I end up in the backcountry.

This time we left in the pouring rain, which normally is no fun, but this time around was welcome because it hasn’t rained in a long time.

The plan was to go back up into the hills, but about an hour in I wondered where this one trail went and it turned out to be a place I wanted to poke around in anyway, so we made a very hard left and headed down it. Just the sort of U-turn searchers hate if you end up missing, but the sort of thing that makes life all the more fun. I know there’s apps that can track just about every movement, include bowel movements, but I’m beginning to hate all that stuff, so I shut it off or leave it at home altogether.

I bought the dog a new backpack and she had the thing shredded about an hour into the trip chasing after a covey of grouse. She lost her dog food in the process, which was in the pack — I found it the next morning along the trail, which was small miracle. Fortunately we had enough oatmeal cookies and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to keep her fed until the next day.

We followed the trail through the pouring rain and by the time we set up camp it had been reduced to just a mist and then stopped altogether, which was nice.

It was a lousy camp, with great views, which is to say my tent was on a slope and I woke up in the middle of the night crammed into the side of the tent because that’s where gravity deposited me.

At least I didn’t roll over entirely with the tent. I’ve done that before.

The boy’s tent was on a flat spot and he was safe from a gravity standpoint, but not so much from a health standpoint. He had a rough cough and it was a long night in the woods taking care of him, the saving grace being a hard sleep from about 4 a.m. to first light at 6 a.m. The next morning we were greeted with mist and fog creeping through the hills and ravines, which made the rough night worth it.

We broke camp and headed out, which was not a long walk at all as we wound through the hills near the Continental Divide. The sun busted through the mist, the Trail of the Mist I nicknamed it. (There is a real Trail of the Mist. It’s in the Bob Marshall at Pagoda Pass, kinda thin and tough to follow, but still pretty cool.)

A grizzly bear fed up high in the hills above the trail. It was one of the few places that seemed to have berries and I hope the rain was enough to fill the serviceberries which weren’t quite yet ripe.

Overnight a herd of elk must have come through as the trail was punched with numerous tracks. it was nice to see, as opposed to people or a horse party. Speaking of people, we saw no one until we got back to the truck, which was just about perfect.

Cowbird in the rain.

Pausing along the trail.

Elk tracks in the trail.