We headed up to Mt. Adams early yesterday morning with the goal of finding some huckleberries.

I was a little ashamed when I realized last week that my almost 11 year old had never been huckleberry picking.  She asked; “What’s a huckleberry?”…  WHAT?!?!  Some of my favorite memories are of camping with my grandma and grandpa near Mt. Adams and picking huckleberries every year.

I can now say that my daughters have both been huckleberry picking……sort of.  The actually “picking” part, lasted all of 10 minutes,…  for them anyway.

When the picking stopped, the whining started….”What time is it?” – “I’m hungry” – “Did we bring something to drink?” – “Can we go back to the van?” – “It’s hot out here” – and,… well, you get the point.

I’m quite sure I NEVER acted like that as a child….at least not while picking huckleberries…..:)

The first place we stopped had a lot of berries!  I really enjoyed myself,… despite all the whining.

The purple fingers, the sound of berries hitting the bottom of my bucket, and the sweet, earthy smell of sun warmed huckleberries quickly brought back many good childhood memories.

After we ate lunch we moved down the road a bit where we found far less huckleberries, but we did find lots of wild blueberries.

They were beautiful, but they really didn’t taste as good as they looked.  I decided to stick with the huckleberries.

We stopped a few times on the way home so I could take pictures of my favorite mountain.

I see this mountain out my living room windows everyday, but rarely get to come this close.  Oh, so beautiful!  Not nearly enough snow left up there after the impossibly mild winter and hot, dry spring and summer we’ve had though.

Guess what else we saw on the way home?

This is my brother Jacob.  He is 25 years old physically, but mentally he’s about 4. (Don’t tell him that though.) Jacob loves SASQUATCH!!!  The entire time we were picking huckleberries, Jacob was stomping around the woods whacking trees with sticks and calling for sasquatch.  Yep,… you read it right.  CALLING for sasquatch!  It’s very funny and cute at first, but after a couple hours it’s just loud and…, well,… loud.  Anyway, after a whole day of searching for big foot he FINALLY found him!  He was soooooo excited, and absolutely loved the creepy red eyes.  He did inform us on the way home that;  That was not a REAL sasquatch, so we need to go back to the mountain so he can search the deepest, darkest woods to find a real one.  As of yet no promises have been made.  😀

What a great day!  I got enough berries to make huckleberry pancakes and a few batches of muffins.  My mom made a pie as soon as she got home.  She’s an overachiever.