Mural Hill with Bill and Fritz

Update on Hansel:  He is back to his ornery self.  He managed to dart outside at 10pm last night when I went to let Zana back in.  Gretel was right behind him.  Zana then turned around and ran off with the other two dogs.  They didn't come back until 5am this morning.  He is no longer limping but has developed a palm-sized hot spot above his rear left leg. 

I don't mind when one dog gets outside as one will stay nearby.  But when two dogs get together, they tend to roam the area and I have no idea where they go. I try hard to keep more than two dogs from escaping at once. Every now and then they outsmart me.

So anyway, Bill and I met at 8:15am in front of the Old Bisbee Brewery to start this hike.  I took Fritz this time, who ended up doing a beautiful job all day.  We began this hike in front of the Old Bisbee Brewery, hiked up some stairs to OK Street to the end, then hiked the unmarked trail to our destination.  The trail is a connection of overgrown mining trails.

The land around Bisbee is owned by a mining company.  It doesn't officially allow hiking in the hills around town, but no one enforces that as there are trails everywhere.  As long as hikers don't camp, hunt or vandalize the area, we can continue to enjoy the area.

It was 40F at the start, upper 50Fs when we got done.  I never took off my jacket despite two other layers.  I was never cold, but I created enough sweat to get chilled when I took my jacket off at the top.

This was Bill's first time up Mural Hill.  He enjoyed taking lots of photographs so I would walk on ahead with Fritz (who stays by my side) while Bill would stop to take photos.  We averaged 26.34 minutes/mile.

There weren't any flowers out and there was a brown smokey haze to our north.   And despite the initial chill, it was a good day for a hike.  There were some clouds overhead, but what kept us cool was the shade in the last  two miles going up the hill.Fritz never showed any heat exhaustion.  He was thirsty when we got to the top, though, as there is no water along this hike. He drank most of the water in my quart Nalgene bottle.

We rested about 20 minutes at the top.  Fritz got some cooked chicken but I discovered that I had left my snacks back in the Honda.

The 7.3-mile hike took us 5:50 hours with 1968' elevation gain.  We took a short detour to see the Buddhist shrine which Bill enjoyed a lot.  Near the shrine is a beautiful thin-trunked long leaf pine.  I haven't seen others like that in our area.

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I was tired and thirsty in the end and stopped in the brewery.  Fritz was tired, too. It 1:45pm and the place was quiet. People slowly came in during my visit. He was mellow the rest of the day.

https://www.strava.com/activities/13068291099

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It was a busy week for news.  On  Wednesday morning an assassin killed the CEO of United Healthcare while he was in NYC for an investors conference.  He was shot dead in front of the Hilton Hotel.  Brian Thompson was 50 years old.  The killer is still on the loose.

On Thursday there was a 7.0 earthquake off the northern California coast. Not much damage on land and no tsunami followed.

And today the Assad regime in Syria collapsed.  Assad flew out of the country to an undisclosed location.  Rebels have taken over.  This is going to be a headache for Trump when he takes over again.