Lower Carr Falls

Walking to the Lower Carr Falls from the road's gate is a nice four-mile round-trip hike on a wide, relatively well-graded road. When the road's closed there is no vehicular traffic to worry about, and as long as there are no other dogs around, I enjoy this hike. Today there was only one other vehicle parked at the gate and the people were at the falls there and not on the road.

I have been doing shorter local hikes lately for two reasons: to give my right knee and left ankle a break, and to save gas money. My van needs to be serviced and has been sitting in the driveway for the past month. I couldn't afford a mechanic bill last month because of Eric's tuition costs. Shelter work has kept me busy as well.

The road up to Carr Peak is closed again after the peaks got a sprinkle of snow last week, so all we could do today was park at the gate and walk up to the Falls. I took Zeke, Minnie and Sadie. It was another lovely day and it is even supposed to get warmer during the week! I spent that hike uphill throwing sticks for the dogs. And even though Zeke doesn't fetch, he likes to get on his hind legs and feign interest.

The only people we met were a couple with a small dog. We were off the trail at an overlook, so I kept the dogs with me off trail until they passed. We were alone the rest of the walk to the falls.

Minnie teased Sadie with sticks she wanted me to throw for her. This gets Sadie excited and she tends to get an epileptic fit later (she had none today, as she calmed down once we were back home). This is why we do not encourage this kind of teasing from Minnie, who does have an aggressive streak in her. Zeke shows no interest in getting involved with fetching.

I let the dogs play in the water at the falls for 15 minutes before we turned around for our return hike. The ice has completely melted and was exactly what they needed. There was also no trash here this time, but I noticed that the memorials that were placed along the fence (where people had fallen to their deaths) have been either removed or vandalized.

Minnie teased Sadie with sticks and Zeke kept following Sadie and for the entire time we were at the overlook, we were alone.

Our little walk took less than two hours. Sky was blue, wind was minimal and I wore a slight windbreaker over my cotton t-shirt that was almost too warm.