It is always satisfying to start the return trip (on a bike ride) at a nice view. In this part of the world, the scenic spot is more likely to be a lake or meadow than a mountain. The meadow was packed with purple flowers which I am too lazy to identify.
It was too soggy to walk through that meadow so I couldn't really get a photo that does it justice.
Just before taking the photo, a large mother elk crossed the meadow with a young calf following her.
Believe it or not I was more delighted with a different animal. It has been years since I have seen a snail. It was fleeing soggy soil apparently, and was posed in the middle of a smooth dark gravel road. I couldn't believe how much of its body stuck out of the shell, and yet it would draw all of the body back into the shell.
As Wikipedia explained, after tripping over its own tongue in a few paragraphs of jargon, a snail is basically a slug with a backpack. A few years ago I photographed this slug:
I feel sorry for his optometrist.
The rain has cut into our mountain biking. But today was 'nice and warm and sunny', as the tourists say, and I actually felt happy about it. It is like my eyeballs and brain were drowning in the color green. The air felt cool and moist and so clean-scrubbed. Mother Nature was kind and gentle, instead of brown and barren.
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