I didn't work today, so when 9am rolled around, I got Minnie ready for a walk up the road with the usual Tuesday gang. By the time I started, everyone had already left the trail head but I caught up to them at the middle falls. (Nina, Robert, Cissy, HollyW, SteveT, Allen and me) We stayed there another 30 minutes or so, chatted, and walked back down. Minnie drank from the iced-over falls water which I broke open by throwing a rock on the surface.
Minnie did well today. She hiked most of the way up on her leash, behaving nicely. She's getting the hang of having a leash on her. But she was off leash on our walk down. I didn't bring a daypack on this hike, as I knew there'd be water at the falls for her to drink, and I usually don't drink on these short hikes.
The gang opted to have lunch at Culver's. I was delayed as I saw four people from the HHC group in the parking lot: Rod, SteveA, Pat and Wayne who had completed a 5-mile hike to the watershed. There were 16 people on that hike. We chatted a bit about that hike. They didn't join me at Culver's though, where the others were already seated and getting served.
The six of us had our burgers and sat inside for an hour talking. We always have interesting conversations, and today it was about the Black Lives Matter movement and how that movement is only hurting itself. Police brutality is a sad reality but statistics show that more white men are killed by cops than black men. However, it's clearly murder when a cop fires 17 bullets into an unarmed (black) man who's walking away from the incident.
We finally left the restaurant at 1pm. Minnie was resting in the warmth of the sun in the van, with the windows open. Back home, she drank more water as I tried to get a few Amazon reviews written. The mini road trip prevented me from reviewing much this week (I'm now ranked at #568) but once back home, finally posted my review on the book "Wild By Nature" by Sarah Marquis, a book I had a hard time getting into before finding my rhythm.
Daniel, a USBP agent, had a night hike scheduled up Carr Canyon Road at 6pm. The start for this one was .8 miles lower on the road than the morning route. I RSVPed for that at 5:45pm, wearing a heavy winter coat, a hat and gloves and took off and was the first at the Perimeter Trail head with Sadie and Zeke. Both were sporting blue lights around their collar. It was 47F degrees out. Emily came along with her three dogs, so we had five dogs and three humans. Hers were on leash but mine weren't. She said a car came speeding downhill a few weeks ago and hit one of her dogs as the driver kept on going. She will no longer let hers run free. We started at 6:05pm to an already dark road with clear stars above. The half moon hadn't risen yet. I had to keep my headlamp straight on the road to watch out for the many uneven ruts.
Luckily no other cars came or went on our hike, which was 5.94 miles and took us 1.54 hours. We started out fast but slowed down as Emily and Daniel were into heavy chat mode and I wanted to give them their privacy. We averaged a 19:13-minute mile but that's slightly off as I didn't pause the GPS when we rested briefly at the turn-around point.
We got back to our cars at 8pm. It was 32F degrees at the parking lot, 40F at home. Unlike the morning gang, these two bid good-bye and took off; void of any post-hike chat. I went straight home, had my tacos that Kevin had picked up earlier, and drank a beer; dinner that waited three hours for me. The sweat I had worked up was now starting to get cold on me.
Total miles hiked today: 10.19 miles. All three hiking dogs were exercised and that's a good feeling. Weather and ankle permitting, I'll try to do more of these night hikes with Dan and his crew.
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