Happy Summer - Wildflowers and Bears!

Shyla and I have been loving our morning rides through wildflowers galore! However, I don't know what the look on her face in the next photo meant!

While it's still snowy and wintery up in the alpine zone, true early summer has arrived here with so many flowers that it blows my mind.

June is truly one of the best months here, if you're not bothered by the astronomical pollen counts. I get asthma and irritated eyes at this time of year but I wouldn't give up the flowers for anything.

It's also the time of year for bear "family breakup" when mother bears with yearling cubs send them away to live on their own. You might remember that we had a sow and two cubs in our neck of the woods last year. The little black cub got hurt, lost track of his family, and eventually was reunited with them in the fall. I assumed that he'd denned with them. Contrary to what I expected, every trail cam photo of that bear family shows that the black cub is not with the mother and the brown cub.

The mother is marking trees as if she's looking for a mate. It is possible that the black cub already left the family, following his instincts that it was time to go off on his own. However, the chocolate cub is staying close. Very soon, the mother will drive away the remaining cub when she meets a mate. That's the usual pattern, although this cub and mother seem extraordinarily bonded to me. Usually, by the cub's second spring, the cub and mother are not traveling so closely together.

Here's that mother marking a tree with her yearling cub standing behind her. This photo made me laugh.

I hope to have time to share the clips of video that I've captured of this pair this spring.

I love spring-summertime!!!