So last night, my 4 year old friend, Lilli, slept over. As we were saying bedtime prayers, I asked her to ask Heavenly Father for a nice day "tomorrow" (meaning today). I did this thinking that He couldn't say "no" to Lilli because she is so dang sweet! Well, it worked. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, and perfect for hiking. It started to get "hot", meaning 70's, towards the end of the hike. See? Prayers ARE answered!!! Anyway, the hike was a KILLER!!! Oh, my gosh! It was brutal!!! The thing about hiking in Alaska is that the people who blazed the trails were apparently in a hurry. I say this because there is no going back and forth, gradually going up the mountain. No round-about way. Nope, not here! It's straight...and I mean STRAIGHT up! It is the shortest distance after all, right? Don't get me wrong, though...it was AWESOME!!!! So on this killer hike, you have to actually hike a couple miles to the actual trailhead. Then it's a couple more to the top. Then you come back down, and hike back a couple miles to the car. The peak is called "Near Point", but it is anything BUT "near"!!!! And to give you an idea of exactly how steep this trail was, I put some duck tape on my heels because I have a tendency to get blisters. Duck tape is the best blister prevention because it REALLY sticks to your skin and generally doesn't come off. Anyway, my hiking boots actually wore the duck tape down and I still got blisters on BOTH heels. When I took the duck tape off, there were my blisters and the duck tape was worn REALLY thin. Well...that has NEVER happened before! Next time I'll have to put on 2 or 3 layers!!! Anyway, while we were hiking to the killer trailhead, we came upon a black bear. He was just lounging in the middle of the trail. So, of course, I took out my camera. As soon as he saw the camera, he got up and started to walk away. So I only got his body...his head is in the bushes. After he got off the trail, we made some noise and kept going. I'm telling you...I LOVE THIS PLACE! Anyway, there were some really pretty wild flowers on the way up, too. So I took some pictures of those because they were such cute little wild flowers. One of them is called a "Chocolate Lilli". Sounds good, right? It is a really pretty flower, and it looks almost black. However, it truly amazes me that something so pretty can smell soooooooooo bad!!!! Seriously, I would like to not have to ever smell that smell again!! It was AWEFUL!!!!! My friend Marjory mentioned that she couldn't smell it above her own body odor (we were sweating pretty dang good!), but then she realized that the smell she was smelling was actually the lilli! It was pretty funny! We finally had to pull out the mint balm just to get the lilli smell out of our sinuses. It wasn't pleasant at all. The irony of it all!!! There were some other really pretty flowers that I don't know the names of that we didn't smell. Why would we after the unpleasantness of the first one! On our way up, we saw another black bear, but it was across a small gully and on another hill. We could see it walking our way, so I got a bit nervous. Then some people started walking down from the peak towards the bear (2 different trails to the peak). So I stood there, resting, completely enthralled by what was going on. They were walking right to the bear, and the bear was walking right towards them. Then they came to an abrupt stop, and the bear wandered off back up the hill. I still there thinking "Bear...bear..bear!!!!" We FINALLY made it to the top of the peak (I'm a rather slow hiker when it's that steep), and there were so many different flies and bees swarming the top. We had to back track a few feet just so we could relax for a bit. Then we hiked back down, made it back to the car, and talked about how tired we were, but how good it felt. All in all...not a bad day! I love spending holidays doing stuff like this, you know? I really do love to hike, even though I'm not in the best shape. I may feel like I'm dying on the way up, but I'm always grateful to be able to get to the top. It's such a sense of accomplishment, and the view is unsurpassed! Enjoy the pictures!!!

ADDENDUM: My friend Marjory just called and said she found out the stats on Near Point. It's a 2 mile hike to the actual trailhead and 1.5 miles to the top for a total of 7 miles. We start at ABOUT 1500 feet from the parking long, ROUGHLY 2000 feet at the trail head, and 3300 feet at the top. OYE!!!!