Kennekuk Cove County Park

This weekend Ginnie's shoulder was hurting, so we decided to do a near by hiking trail instead of biking. This meant we got to take Tesla, and he got to wear his new boots.

He had them on for all of five minutes, alternating between trying desparately to get them off and trying to live with them, before he managed to get one off. At this point Ginnie decided to oblige him and remove the others. We are not sure if this was a good idea, though, because when we got home he was limping on one of his paws. We tried to clean it and got a few little bits that may have been irritating it off. He was pretty tuckered out so we didn't see him move the rest of the night, so weren't sure if that was what was bothering him. He's always appeared to favor his left paw a little; when we first got him the vet was unable to find anything wrong, so it may just be some ancient injury acting up. As of today he doesn't appear to be having any trouble.

Having not learned her lesson from our trip to Amish country, she chose a trail from our book that was 7.5 miles and had four footprints on a scale of one to five. This was due to the large number of steep dips carved out by the creeks feeding Lake Mingo. It is very difficult to take a picture of steepness, but here is Ginnie's best effort.

The brightness at the top of the hill is from the midday sun being obscured by the ground and trees. The hills were not kind to Ginnie, and before we had gone two miles she was convinced she could not finish. Unfortunately for her I am a sadist and we continued. We got some cool pictures, but unfortunately no snakes.

Most of the pictures are pretty self explanatory, but there's one that we aren't sure about. We think it's some sort of dung with the nuts and berries in it, but we're not one hundred percent positive on that. At one point Ginnie was having an awful time with the camera and could not get a clear picture. No matter what she did, it was ending up fuzzy and light. We figured out the cause when we were putting the camera in the case before a steep climb: a big white bug on the lens. Luckily just blowing on it a little made it fly off; I did not want to accidentally get dead bug juice on the lens trying to get the sucker to go away.

I forgot to charge up the batteries for DSLR, but we can shoot like 2000 pictures on one charge, so I figured it would be okay. Just before mile marker 2 it was done and we had to put it away. Luckily we also had our point and shoot. It was of no help because I didn't charge it either, and I only managed to get one fuzzy picture of a caterpillar before it died. The camera died, not the caterpillar. The only caterpillar that died during our trip was the one Tesla ate. He apparently was not a fan, because he didn't eat any more after that, even though there were hundreds of them.

Like I said, Ginnie was convinced she would never be able to finish and she would die in the woods or something, and I just dragged her on. About half way around there is a picnic table next to the water. Tesla was able to drink and Ginnie got to sit for a while (for the first three miles there was no place to sit), which must have been just what she needed because after we got going again she was feeling much better and only mentioned dying one more time. Tesla and I went exploring one off-shoot of the trail to see if it was worth taking and decided against it because it appeared to be a dead end. Ginnie was convinced I had seen a snake. The following conversation ensued:

Ginnie: Did you see an anaconda?

Me: No.

Ginnie: Do anacondas eat people?

Me: No.

Ginnie: What do they eat?

Me: Small animals.

Ginnie: Like bears?

I decided she was just saying this stuff to give me something funny to write here, but she swears that's not the case. We also decided that snakes know that bearded men are poisonous for them to eat and that the toxicity is directly proportional to beard length. This is obviously why we have seen no snakes; they fear me. So either I have convinced her to stop making me cut my beard, or she was delirious from the heat and trying not to think about how she was going to die in the woods.

The post-anaconda part of the trail was uneventful except for the blue heron skimming across the water and the deer that we didn't get pictures of. Tesla was very intent on being the leader, but he could barely manage it. He would trot ahead of us and then slow down until we caught up and then he would speed up again briefly and repeat. This went on for at least 45 minutes, though occasionally he would drift off to the side of the path and appear to look for a place to lay down. We were worried he would have to be carried back to the car, but he made it. The whole thing took a total of 4.5 hours for a whopping average speed of just over 1.5 mph.