The Inch-Worm Jungle of Death

As part of an exploration/deer survey of our local mountains, Seth and I went up Hobbs Canyon this weekend. There isn't really a trail that goes up there so we pretty much had to blaze our way up through the oak brush along the ridge. Not exactly the most fun or effective way to hike, but it was definitely adventurous.

Overlooking Layton area (that's Antelope Island in the background)

While fighting our way through the oak brush, we saw what must be the largest colony of inch worms in the world. All the oak brush leaves were hashed to bits and the little inch worms were hanging by their silk threads off of all the trees. We must have picked off about a hundred of them throughout the day. We kept finding them on our hats, crawling up the backs of our necks, and making their way up our backpacks and pants. I've never seen anything like it.

I did take a picture of the millions of worms, but it didn't turn out too well. So look at Seth in this beautiful meadow instead.

 

This was my favorite conversation snippet of the day:

Seth: {pointing at the surrounding bushes} I'd say a hippo came through here about three hours ago.
Karen: Really?! I had no idea we had hippos here! We better get some hippo spray.

Probably the best part of the hike was seeing all the wildflowers in bloom. I couldn't believe how many different flowers there were.*

Seth doing his part to repopulate the endangered dandilionus giganticus

*Stay tuned for your infallible** guide to identifying Utah wildflowers!

** OK they're probably all going to be wrong, but at least there'll be pictures of flowers. Identifying stuff is hard.