None of that pick-your-own berry farm business for us. You know, those places where you drive up, park your car, walk 50 feet to a field of bushes and start filling buckets with berries. Not us!

We hike 3 miles up a mountainside trail with a vague hope that we’ll be able to find some blueberry bushes before we find a bear.

We dropped Tess off early at cheerleading practice as they were making “break through” signs for the football team to run through to start the game. This gave us 3.5 hours to find the trailhead, hike “several miles”, locate the blueberries, pick some, get back to the van and then back to the school to pick up Tess by 8:30pm.

The trail was pleasant. Not too steep. Just enough to remind us exactly how out-of-shape we are. We hiked for almost 1.5 hours without spotting any berries (or bears). We were just about to turn around when we came out into an open field area surrounded by higher mountain peaks with a steep drop off down to a river. This looked promising.

Upon further investigation, and a lot of loud whistling (to ward off bears), we located an area of low growing blueberry bushes. Yay! We picked for a half hour and high-tailed it the 3 mile hike back to the van.

Baby rode in her back pack much of the time, or Dad carried her. The woods were very damp as it’s been raining for two weeks. It rained a little as we hiked. My feet felt like they were in a pond, my sneakers were so saturated. A cold pond.

Blueberry season lasts well into September. So we’ll certainly try to go again. Maybe we’ll find another patch.