Returning to the High Country

I've been out of town for the last few days to an elevation near sea level.  I ran a few days in the humidity and loved the total sweat factor.  I always feel like I'm getting rid of all sorts of things through my skin cells when exercising in humidity.  Luckily, the temps weren't that bad and it was a great visit to my brother's in Virginia.  The twenty burpees for twenty days challenge is over.  Admittedly, I didn't do a great job of completing each day's burpee goal.  Two of the six days that I didn't do burpees were followed by days that I doubled up on the burpees.  The other days...I just didn't do them.  Some of those days I did do strength exercises, just not burpees.  Today we went on our favorite trail run in the high country.  We started at the trailhead to the Devil's Causeway at Stillwater Reservoir outside of Yampa.  Instead of going right up the steep, at times perilous trail that is always super busy, we stayed left.  This trail takes us along the shores of the reservoir and to the headwaters.  We follow that water the entire way up to a few high mountain lakes.  That's our turn around.  If we continued on the trail, we could go back over the Causeway and down (this loop takes about 3 1/2 hours) or we could go up and over, ending up at Trapper's Lake.  After a short breather at the lakes and talking about the trail's highpoints (nice undulations, beautiful flowers, stunning scenery, hardly anyone on the trail) we started back.  That's when I heard the splash of something big moving in Bear River.  I turned towards the noise and saw a bull moose.  No less than about 30 feet away.  Wow!  He moved out of the water, stopped, turned and looked at us and that's all I saw.  Because I didn't stop running.  I kept going.  Welcome to the High Country!