The water of Heart Lake really is this blue. You can see a wedge of Canadian geese taking flight further out the Lake, near the point where the Trail Creek Trail leaves the lakeshore.

That's Big Game Ridge and Two Ocean Plateau on the horizon.

Do you see the moose in the lower photo? He's taking a respite from the heat beneath a tree right in the center of the photo. He was only one of many moose I spotted while staying on the east side of the Lake. One walked right by my tent at about 1 in the morning. No matter how much time I spend in the Yellowstone backcountry, I still get a chill when I hear footsteps just outside my tent at night, especially when doing a solo trip. It's funny though - when I first head into the backcountry on a long solo trip, I'm always on high alert, and rarely sleep well on my first night out. However, by the second evening, I was so relaxed that when the moose clomped along the lakeshore near my tent, I hardly noticed, awakening only long enough to recognize the sound.

There is a certain amount of danger in traveling solo in Grizzly country, or in any wild country for that matter. However, the risks are a lot less than, say, camping at roadside along many of the highways around the Park. A few years back, a young lady was shot and killed while camping by the highway north of Gardiner, Montana, by a drunk that first claimed that he thought she was a bear - even though she was inside a tent at the time. Then there was the poor fellow that was gunned down by drunks in another part of Montana after he crashed his truck over a high enbankment. As he crawled back up to the highway, some drunks in a pickup truck roared up and shot him from the front seat of the truck, swearing later in court that they were sure that he was a bear. To add insult to injury, the judge in the case admonished the victim for not wearing blaze orange, "since it was, after all, hunting season."

I'll take my chances with the bears and wolves, thank you!