The drive home was relatively uneventful, save for some torrential rains between Butte and CdA.  As I got closer to home, evidence of flooding grew.  By the time I reached our lake, it was blatant.  Docks overturned, trees submerged.  Tonight I went for a sunset hike on Tubbs Hill, a wilderness area that takes me less than 10 minutes to walk to from my house.  It's snuggled in next to the resort, right on the lake.  The flooding there was amazing.  The hill has numerous small beaches nestled around it that you can hike down to, plus a couple larger beaches that are more or less right on one of the trails.  All the beaches are covered in water.  The plus side to all the water is that everything is very lush, and in bloom.  I have hyacinths, tulips, periwinkle, and lots more blooming in my yard.  The cherry trees are flowering, the grass is long and green.  Remarkably different from the Badlands, and I love both.  Tonight's hike was great, but I'm really missing my daily hikes on the buttes right now.  These hard rocks aren't the same, and my daily respon sibilities pull me away from random meandering explorations.


While I'm on the subject of Tubbs, I'd like to mention a project I finished up just before I left for the Badlands.  It is an activity booklet for kids to use to explore and learn more about Tubbs Hill.  I designed it to be in the same vein as what the national parks do for their junior ranger programs.  The booklet can be downloaded for free at tubbshill.org under "Junior Friends."  It was released on Earth Day, in my absence, and seems to be a huge success.  The local newspaper published an article about it, which features some spectacular quotes by my kid: http://cdapress.com/news/local_news/article_812a1371-896c-5f31-bbe1-a8e71aa5a579.html  Many thanks to the handful of people who helped me make an idea into reality.

West entrance to Tubbs.

A spot I have painted twice.  Those two juts of rock are typically exposed way down to the next layer of rock.

This spit of land is usually very wide, I've never seen it so narrow.

Those little rocks out there are much larger, and lead out to a line of rocks that are usually visible.  Flooded plants in foreground.