Camp Delany/Sun Lakes Park

5:00 am

This is Table Rock.

Rabecca, Jillian and I decided to climb to the top to see what kind of plants were growing up there.

And that's exactly what we did.

This is the path we took to the top. I'm using the term "path" loosely. This is also the huge bit of rock that I broke my new hiking shoes in. THANK GOD for those hiking shoes.

This is the view from half way up. Beautiful day, 70 degrees and sunny.

This is a picture of the lichens that grow on the shady side of all the rock formations in the area. They're a very neon green that isn't showing up well in this picture. Stunning with the black rock and blue sky when we turned the corner.

Jillian's most of the way up.

These are bones in an owl pellet that I found on a ledge most of the way to the top. There are great horned owls everywhere, you can hear them at night but only two of 41 people on this field trip actually saw one.

This is the view of the valley we stayed in for three days from the top of Table Rock. We're about eye level with the red tailed hawks that we could see from camp as little specks in the sky.

The top of Table Rock wound up looking much like the valley we stayed in. But really, that's not the point. After two hours of climbing, sliding and swearing we were pretty proud of ourselves. Plus we did find a townsend's solitaire bird at the top that hadn't been on the bird list for the park so we were pretty excited that we'd made a new discovery. Jillian again!