The trees have pretty much dropped all of their leaves, so the forest was barren. Very wintry and the views into the Gans Creek valley were spectacular, though not very colorful.
The hike, while not very strenuous or amazingly scenic, did provide for one out-of-the-ordinary experience. Near the end of the hike, we were met on the trail by a strange stray dog, who we later discovered was named Buddy. And Buddy wanted to play. He went into the woods and found a suitable stick (which was actually pretty large). He brought it back to the trail and stood about fifteen feet in front of us, placing the stick across the trail and patiently waiting for someone to throw it.
Which we did. And that was that. Buddy was with us for the rest of the way. When we got back to the car, Buddy kept fetching stick after stick, at one point holding four sticks in his jaws at one time.We checked Buddy's collar and found his name and phone number. The Robmeister made the call on his cell.
"Are you the owner of Buddy the dog?"
"Well, he's here at the Shooting Star Trailhead."
"Okay."
The Robmeister told us that the owner said that the park was "Buddy's backyard," and to just leave him and he would come home eventually. I'm not going to pontificate on what I think about unsupervised dogs running wild, but this was a humorous occurence in my growing experience with unchecked canine curiosity.
After breakfast at Lucy's Restaurant, Monkey and I went to fetch our own canine after his sleepover at Uncle Joe's and Aunt James'. He reportedly had a whale of a time with Ms. London Belle. When we got home, he slept and slept. He even slept through dinner. Imagine that.
Some pics (courtesy of Uncle Jo
e) of Ripken's evening.
Notice he spent a great deal of time with things from Meadow Lane in his mouth. That's my boy!
1 comment:
How nostalgic am I? Pics of Shooting Star Trail, pics of Ripken, the start of deer hunting season (which somehow went unacknowledged here), unsupervised dogs gone wild (sort of).... Life in CoMo can be so... um... easy and interesting! I miss it in many ways. How bizarre, the run-in with Buddy the dog - and that is an excellent pic of him gathering as many sticks as he can hold in his jaws!
It is strange - but not necessarily in a bad way - that there are still leaves on the trees here in mid-November. It's also been so mild. These are good things and also give me some angst as I realize (on this, ten years to the day that in my first semester of my doctoral program, State College got rocked with 27 inches of snow and I swear we didn't see the green grass again until late April) that this is the farthest south I've lived. Can I get an oy vey?! Anyways, I'm hoping to explore some of the surrounding nature by hiking somewhere yet TBD on my day off Friday.
Anon AMVB
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