Out of the blue the other day Justin Hains called to chat. My oh my hadn’t seen him nigh on to 30 years. Himself and a fellow his age named Andy Butrick worked for me one summer there in the Valley on some projects. Justin had been training horses all over the west. He started off pack’n and wrangling for D.K. Mitchell in the Bob. As we remembered those great times in the hills made me homesick.
Anyway, many moons ago myself, Justin and Andy took a break from the ordinary and headed to Necklace Lakes by way of Upper Holland over to Sapphire Lakes with plans on come’n out by way of the Old Switch back trail. Not much traffic there ‘cause it’s quite steep. I’d been both ways on it several times and rarely seen anyone.
So we did our camp’n and fish’n thing for a couple of days and went on down through the notch. Reminded me of the year before in July the mule walked on 2 feet of snow so hard he stayed on top.
We just started down around the corner when lo and behold appears 3 gals out for a hike. They knew proper trail manners and got off on the low side of the trail. College age, probably want’n to enjoy a nice outing before school started as it was a warm August day. We exchanged greetings and was not hard to notice their choice of attire – what there was of it.
Their entire wardrobe was bikinis!!
Yup, and bugs were tak’n advantage of all that exposed flesh. Course they had on backpacks don’t ya know. I hoped they had some bug spray. The fellas thought we should turn around and make sure they made it safely to the lakes. They think’n like typical 18-19 year olds. Think’n they were Sir Galahads. I said,’ I don’t think that’s a good idea boys.’ On we went and lead’n our horses, once out of hearing, Justin, in the lead, said “Whoa” and looked around his horse and sez, “at least they’re dressed for the weather.”
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