Umtanum Creek Canyon — Sunday, May. 5, 2019

Went on a Sunday and the trail and surroundings are all at that nice, bright green. Missed initially where you’re supposed to cross the creek and instead ambled ahead and started crawling over logs, and startled a rattler who startled me and gave me that telltale warning, before hastily doubling back and finding the right turn for the creek. You’ll know it if you see the orange flag in the tree branch above the creek, very helpful.

Kept pushing along into the aspen groves and beyond that before we encountered another rattler (it is their habitat afterall, and we are walking right through it) and decided it was a good time to turn around anyways. Beautiful day, lots of pretty flowers absolutely everywhere, apple trees are wonderfully fragrant, and there were some people but not so many that it felt crowded. Trail could use a bit of cleaning up, but nothing too bad at all. All in all, a great day. But fair warning... watch out for the rattlesnakes and keep your dogs close, just in case.