Full moon

I have a lot of time lately to go hiking.  I'm fine with that.  The weather has been ideal, with breezes and temperatures hovering in the 60s.  I met up with Susan at 11 and walked the dogs along the river, under a high sun that accentuated the bright green of the foliage.  The dogs all love this walk in the shade and near the water, but sometimes Allie can get rough.  She pushed Sadie down a steep embankment today, causing Sadie to fall into the water head first.  She wasn't injured, but Sadie doesn't like full-body dippings.  Sadie, Allie and Minnie like to compete for the sticks we throw them, but only Minnie actually goes after them.  The other two just bark.

The river is returning to its shallow level.  I told Susan we could start wading in the water instead.

We walked a pleasant 2.2 miles.  My full moon hike was scheduled for 5pm so we kept the morning walk short.  At 4:45pm I was outside again, this time with just Zeke, and met Holly, SteveD and DavidB for the moon hike in the Lower Miller canyon parking lot.  The pink Supermoon moon was slated to rise at 6:35pm but I worried if we would see it, as we had a nice cloud cover.  We did see prisms of color to the south and east, as rain fell but evaporated before hitting the ground (virga).

We walked 1.5 miles north along the Perimeter trail, a fairly level stretch before that final hill into Carr Canyon, which we did not go up.  The lighting was near perfect for moon photography.  The sun didn't set until 6:45pm, giving us enough light for focus.  There were plenty of penstemons along this trail. The moon finally showed itself a few minutes past official time and got us all to take photos as we stood on the rocks, talking about the coronavirus and the death of singer-songwriter John Prine today at the age of 73. from complications of the coronavirus.  I wasn't familiar with Prine's music, making me realize how ignorant I am of music of that era (early 1970s).  Bonnie Raitt made Prine's song "Woman from Montgomery" popular.

It quickly got chilly and windier once the sun set, so we walked down the hill and got back to our cars a half-mile later.  This short hike was 3.2 miles.

I sat outside with Kevin for a while, and we exchanged our day's events.  He took a bad fall when he got up to go inside, knocking over the tall heater (it wasn't on) and hitting the cement patio.  The heater's chute then hit him in the head.  It looked bad, but he was OK.  He lay there on the floor motioneless for a while.  Minnie came up to him to butt his head and lay next to him, as if on guard.  Kevin then admitted later he had had 12 cans of beer.  Well, that'll knock you over!