The Heart Lake Trailhead in south Yellowstone. On a really hot August day, I was dreading following the horses in over the dusty trail with little shade. Luckily, it turned out that they were all headed for Shoshone Lake.

The first 5 miles of the Heart Lake trail are pretty flat - and pretty pretty too. I liked the combination of wet meadows and scraggly pine forests along the way. It's a dusty trail though in dry weather, as are many of the trails in southern Yellowstone. It winds, dips and bobs its way through the new forest that is re-growing after being burned over during the fires of '88. I headed in on a day when the temps were bouncing around 80 degrees - that's warm for Yellowstone.

There were two hikers that headed in not far behind me. I noticed that whenever I took a break, they'd also stop - then when I'd resume hiking, they'd pick up and follow. This went on until I reached the top of the hill at Witch Creek, when they finally joined me to take in the view. It turned out that they were worried about encountering bears and figured that having me 'break trail' ahead of them would be a safe course of action. They were pretty disappointed to learn that I planned to head down the eastern shore of Heart Lake, rather than the west shore where they planned to spend the night.