This girl right here is a wonderful soul whom I am proud to call one of my best friends. Whenever I'm ready for an adventure into the wilderness, she's always up for it. Nature-freak buddies we are. :)

 

On this particular morning, we woke up at 5:00 and rode our bikes in the dark towards the mountains. Being adventurous and curious (and maybe somewhat rebellious), we ducked under some "caution" tape, swerved around the "danger" cones, and rode past the "Stay out! Bear activity." signs that had taken over our chosen path. As it turns out, I guess the signs were supposed to warn us, because they were absolutely right. Just moments after entering the path and cycling through the dim light of early morning, a giant shadow jumped out directly in front of us. We skidded, almost crashed into the bear, and then into each other. The bear was frightened enough that it ran into the forest, and we laughed it off. Three minutes later, same thing happened, but with 3 bears at once. We skidded, almost crashed into them all, almost crashed into each other, but managed to get our balance back as the frightened bears ran off into the woods. By now we've become a little nervous realizing the caution signs were right, so we spent the rest of the morning singing while we biked and hiked through the wilderness. I guess our singing is pretty horrible, because there were no more wildlife sightings, except for that of a cute coyote.

 

We made it to the top of a small mountain in time to watch the sunrise, and it was absolutely beautiful. I won't forget it.