We're a little obsessed!

Yes! We are a little obsessed with..... huckleberries! Yesterday would count my fifth time going huckleberry picking and we have really enjoyed our adventures for the past few weeks. We keep saying, thank goodness Leslie spotted them on our first hike up the ..... wait a minute I'm not telling where our huckleberry spot is! :) There will be many a huckleberry muffin, cheesecake, pancake, and cake for that matter had by the Schauerhamers and Baums, oh and maybe some of their extended family and friends, if they are lucky!!!!

For those who have never been huckleberry picking before we'll take you along on our fourth adventure via this blog. 

We woke up, got ready by packing a lunch, snacks, bug spray, special ice cream buckets, blanket, stools and a nice big wagon to hold all the supplies and the kidlets. 

We have to hike a little ways down the trail but not long before you see several bushes full of berries. The girls have become great pickers and can spot them among the other not so good berries. 

We really like this spot to pick because the river is really close and it makes for a beautiful atmosphere. It's good because huckleberry picking takes a lot of time and being here makes it much more enjoyable. 

Here is Lily picking with her little stool and her special ice cream bucket, special only because it has a hole cut out of the top so that if you tilt your bucket your berries won't come tumbling out. This didn't actually help on our third adventure because my bucket full of berries fell out of the stroller and fell completely upside down so when I went to lift up the lid with all the berries on it, they all fell through the hole and onto the dirt trail. I screamed and we all hurried and rushed to pick up the berries. 

Lily sure loves her huckleberries. She and Leah got to the point where they needed their own buckets for picking on our fifth adventure. I hope they remember this when they get older, probably not but I'm sure we will do it again next year. 

Of course if we were going to stay out all day we needed to have a lunch, so here is yet another picture of Lily and her tater chips. Like I said in another post, one day I will compile them all and send them to get money from the Lays potato chip company. 

Also for those who have never been huckleberry picking, they are not always the easiest to spot, usually they are hiding underneath all of the leaves as you can see in the middle picture in the collage below. Then when you flip it upside down, many delicious plump berries!

They really are beautiful! Here are some interesting facts I've learned about huckleberries,

it is the Idaho state fruit

they are not grown commercially 

Huck Finn is actually Huckleberry Finn (that didn't dawn on me until now)

they are number one in their antioxidant activity

huckleberries range from $50-$90 a gallon

(we didn't ever pick a gallon on any one of our days, the most we would get was about 12 cups, that's a good six hour day)

I just came across this really cute personal story given by a fellow huckleberry picker, 

This is too true!

Here is the link,

http://wildhuckleberry.com/tag/huckleberry-plants/

Mom, Lizzy and Les, you will enjoy it!

After reading that little story you can see why we all felt like doing this..

Leah and Lily usually had a nap on our excursions, I'm not sure why she didn't have her shoes on but why not get comfortable in the middle of a dirt trail eh? 

A few hours and a very sore back later, we decided it was time to head home. We hiked back to the pickup, loaded everything in, and started our drive back home. My mom was so tired she kept it to about 30 miles an hour. Not far from where we started my mom told the girls to look out for wildlife, meaning cows and maybe a chipmunk. Little did she know that seconds later we would see a black bear bounding out of the nearby river up the side and onto the road we were driving down. It looked at us, shook the water off it's thick fur, got startled and ran of like the dickens! We all screamed "BEAR!!" I threw the girls aside to get my camera and by the time I was ready to point and shoot it was gone! DARN IT!! But wow was that neat! That was only the second bear I've seen in the wild and not many people get to even see one. 

Needless to say, yesterday when we went out we were a little more cautious of the wildlife. We ran into some hikers and they told us that just that morning they had seen two grizzlies across the river. We laughed nervously and hoped they wouldn't make it to where we were picking. As we picked we were a little more aware of foreign noises or cracking branches. Later that day Lily fell asleep and so we put her in the wagon, I found a good spot and sat down to pick when I heard these low grumbling growling noises. I instantly stood up and looked around frantically looking for and expecting a grizzly bear to be barreling towards me and my girls. I looked and didn't see anything. I walked a little further and found that the "grizzly bear" was actually my two year old snoring in the wagon! I laughed and told my mom what I had thought and she admitted that she had done the exact same thing minutes earlier. We were a little on edge! 

Fortunately for us we didn't run across a bear, instead several happy hikers wondering what in the heck we were doing. One couple, from Holland, were curious enough to ask what the berries looked and tasted like. We showed them and I think we got them hooked.

Despite the hard work, sore backs, purple hands, dirty faces and mosquito bites it was all worth it for a these sweet babies...