I wanted to explore the Uintas and go somewhere with my girls, so found a nice, short hike to Ruth Lake. I hadn’t been there before, at least not since I was old enough to remember and it seemed like a perfect option. Weather was perfect, calm, around 70 degrees with a few clouds. The trailhead was moderately busy, but not too bad. The hike was pretty mellow, about a mile or so through some pines and meadows, quite beautiful. There was a small lake in a meadow first and then a rise and Ruth Lake. A group of people was actually getting ready to jump in, crazy since it wasn’t that warm. The lake was quite scenic with some small cliffs along one side and a meaadow along the far edge. Views of Hayden Peak were spectacular as we progressed around the south shore. We found a little grassy area and had a nice picnic with Anna. We realized however that we had forgotten nipples for the bottle. We did have several solid food snacks though including Avocado and Banana and Anna had had quite a bit of milk before the trail so we were good for the hour or so we were there. There were a few sporadic risers and I made a few casts and managed a micro brookie at which point I decided I would take my little girl around and show her the world of the mountains. We looked at trees, bark, pinecones, pine needles and all of it was a wonder to her. I showed her how to smell pine needles and since she had recently learned to point, was pointing at everything with her. I showed her a small spring that came into the lake and let her play in it a bit and then had Tammy show her lily pads and tree bark while I snapped some pics. After 40 minutes or so, we packed up and proceeded around the rest of the lake. I put on a leech and made sporadic casts with Anna on my back. I noticed a pretty good sized dead brookie on the edge which led me to believe there were some bigger fish and not too long after, I hooked a really nice on but lost it almost immediately. No other eats after that, but wasn’t fishing too hard. We made our way back down the trail and ran into a guy mushroom hunting who showed us a couple of huge Boletes Mushrooms he had found. We spotted some others in a meadow but weren’t sure what they were although I am pretty sure they were more Porcinis like the ones my parents had been finding. We made our way back to the car and headed home after a nice afternoon hike.
