July 29th: Is there a bison along the road?

Today was the big day. Mirror lake - here I finally come! From Kamas leads a scenic highway high up into the mountains. First you pass the small town of Samak (yes... it is Kamas read the other way!) where they have a neat smoke house with tasty goodies inside.

Every 2 miles I stopped and wrote down our elevation. Whoever wants to ride their car on this scenic byway has to pay 6 dollars for 3 days. Luckily, the lady in the booth along the road let us go. Just as we got in, a deer jumped over the road! We ended at mile 23, still 9 miles from the lake, at an elevation of 2660 meters. By then I was a bit tired of seeing the same scenery all the time: winding roads and pine trees. I was a bit disappointed but I guess the nicest scenery was still to come. But at almost 1 p.m. I was eager to head down - also watching the clouds in the sky. Lucky us... while racing down (learning to draft) I suddenly noticed a young moose hidden behind the trees. Slammed the brakes and returned to see if I was not delirious from the oxygen shortage. No way... it was a moose and I bet mama moose was somewhere around. We enjoyed this moment for a while... noticing no drivers in the passing cars saw what we did! Somewhat further down the road a couple of big fat raindrops hit my helmet: good thing we were not high up in the mountain anymore - it looked eerie up there. Our luck of seeing wildlife was not gone yet as I suddenly yelled out to Sofie:"Kiek, kiek, kiek". Turns out she was looking for chicken while I was pointing her some strange looking brown birds with long necks, just walkin in the high, wet grassland. Turns out it were sandcranes - the lady in the booth told us so. And for good luck: our morning deer jumped out on the road again as we were leaving the payed highway. Thought this was a pretty good show! After seeing all that wildlife, Sofie confessed that this morning, while cycling uphill, she had noticed some black thing along the road and had cycled somewhat faster, scared it was some bison again. Turned out it was a big rock!
Samak smoke house became our hot chocolate stop (yes - it is still over 30 degrees out but Sofie enjoys hot chocolate everywhere).
Back "home" we relaxed in the garden again - making sudoku's or crosswords, read somewhat and I played with the horseshoes again but had no luck throwing that thing around the stick.
A dinner of ravioli with raw carrots ended may day. I guess, we would get the price making the weirdest dinnercombinations!