Mountain Goat hike

Yesterday for to celebrate my wife's birthday, she wanted to hike to the Lower Palisades Lake near Swan Valley, Idaho.  She had done it the week before with friends and they had seen some Mountain goats and I had expressed a desire to see and photograph them.  We got a late start but had a great day even with some rain showers freshening up us on the way back down the trail.
On the way in past a couple of homes, we saw this beautiful peacock.  It was displaying when we first saw it, but would not after I got my camera ready.

 

We also saw three mule deer as we drove to the trailhead.  Two of them were budding bucks with their growing antlers.

 

 

About  two miles into the hike I heard rocks falling over the roar of the creek and caught this nanny jumping from a ledge, across a fallen tree to a rock where it landed perfectly.

 

There were eight Mountain goats in this herd with four small babies that one biker would call "little fur balls."

 

We enjoyed a lot of early spring flowers along the way.

 

Palisades Creek was roaring down through the canyon caused by melting snow and recent rains.

 

 

My wife led the way up and down the trail as we hiked 8.2 miles  for the day.

 

On the way back down from the Lower Palisades Lake that had four pair of Barrow's Goldeneyes and two pair of Common Mergansers on it, we once again ran into the Mountain goats as they rested in the rain on the hard rocks of the canyon.

 

 

I loved spending the day with my wife in the wilds of Idaho.