Continuing my Douglas Creek Canyon explorations after first doing Best Desert Hikes #33 in the morning, I proceeded on the same main access road for another mile south to do Hike #35 Douglas Creek Canyon-Badger Mtn. Until my Honda Civic spontaneously slammed on its own brakes when faced by a ford of Douglas Creek. This was high clearance territory folks. The creek at the ford is wide and barely flowing but came to my knees (18+"" deep) so I understood the car's panicked reaction. I left it parked in the shade of a tree grove back up the road a bit. Okay, so after a thrilling no socks & innersoles but wearing the boots crossing I soon came to the old railroad grade, turned right (north) and followed it a straight .7 mi to a rustic livestock watering station, surrounded by tall sage plants. The guidebook describes the trough as decrepit but I think it's been upgraded to shiny new stainless steel. Next to the station is a green BLM gate allowing public access thru the fenceline to a dirt road heading west up into a cleft between the hills (Badger Mtn) It was latched and there were some cattle hanging around nearby so I made sure it was relatched after passing through. Okay this is where city boy meets the country life. There were several HUGE cattle scattered about both on and off the dirt road, near and far. Huge beasts. Not an Ol' Bessie among them. None moved a muscle or flicked a fly off a rump as I approached up the road. It was a cow vs. man smackdown. Pictures of scheming diabolical Farside cartoon cows danced in my head. I calmed my nerves and figured I'll just talk to these fellas as I approach and they'll just amble away peaceably. No dice. One big (did I mentioned they were huge?) jet-black bull snorts at me and no kidding makes a flinch toward me. I try to climb a 2' sage bush but that's ridiculous. I figure okay I'll just vector off and up cross-country-like to the top of the hill- who cares about the stupid road anyway. Dang if some others aren't slowly climbing up ahead. I didn't realize cows could climb so well and straight up too. But eventually I got by them by using one of their own engineered trails to the top. Whew that was a close one. Something to tell my grandchildren. As I panted from the climb up I topped out onto the plateau and an awesome 360 view of the area. Below me the Doug Crk Cyn, rolling green hills and the immense Waterville Plateau and farmlands off into the distance, the Stuart Range and other peaks way off to the west. Best of all I had stumbled on a big patch of recently emerged bitterroot flowers. Ah sweet. As I spent an hour or so bending down photographing them and enjoying the view in the late afternoon warm light, nice puffy clouds occasionally floating by, I had dropped my pack so when I eventually picked it up I checked it for ticks as I'm wont to do in tick land whooaa nelly there's my first ever actual tick sighting- the little varmint is scooting around on the bottom corner of the pack. I'm actually crazily excited (due more to not finding it embedded in me for sure) and take lots of pics of it to document this great discovery. I don't have a super macro lens so the photos don't do it justice. But they are reddish brown, crablike, and are ugly. Be happy they aren't the size of badgers or no one would venture within a 1000 miles of central WA without an elephant gun. So as I skipped down the cow trail back to the railroad grade and the return ford of the creek I'd had a good day. I even kept my boots and socks on and just manly strode across the mighty Douglas Crk to my car. There should be a trip report box to check, □ Cows!