Snow Day!

We haven't had one of these for... a whole year! Conker was psyched last night with the snow, and even more excited today on our morning hike. (Morning? Yes, I did get up before noon for the first time ever.)

And now, the evidence.

On the way to Cathedral Hills, JPR (lameass local public radio station) played Winter by Antonio Vivaldi (how cliche) but hey, it's not like we get snow much so I guess it was alright. I actually really like that piece, it's my favorite of the Four Seasons.

The first thing Conker did when we hit the trail was take off off-trail somewhere. I don't know if he was chasing something (looked like it) or was just OMFGSNOWGOTTARUNOMGOMGWTFRUN! I imagine many other Shiba owners would have had a miniature (or major) meltdown at the sight (or lack of) their Shiba running off into the snow-covered forest. I just walked around a bit then stepped off-trail and hollered at Conker to get his scrawny butt back here, and he did, so we began our snow hike.

I, like I usually do, overdressed a bit. Though snow was on the ground, it was a relatively "warm" 36 degrees or so. I had on long johns with waterproof (but not snowboarding, I almost but didn't wear those) pants, my nasty-ass shoes (smell like the pond I went into to fetch my Coots), two pairs of socks, a scarf, and my favorite jacket that I always wear. And a raccoon skin hat. With a tail.

Conker blew his coat early this year, thanks to the trip to AZ for Christmas. He didn't seem to notice though, and the lack of undercoat didn't slow him down one bit. Sped him up I might think, actually.

Obligatory Shiba-on-the-pick-nick-table picture.

There was some pretty spiffy scenery too.

Some parts of the trails had more snow than others. My guess is that something around 2 inches fell in Cathedral Hills which is only a little over 5 miles from my house. Funny how much of a difference about 100-300 feet in elevation makes when it comes to this. (Other places not-too-far-away got 6 inches or more.)

 We played Conker's second favorite snow game. (More pictures of this will be posted later.)

Overall it was a really nice hike. We did about 3.75 miles, not too bad, but I'd like to start making these hikes 5+ as the average instead of slightly over 3. We only ran into one other person, a man and his Basset Hound who got along with Conker nicely.


After driving back home, I took all three dogs to the dog park. That short hour between when I left and got back resulted in almost all the snow in town being melted. It's almost all completely gone now.

All dogs did a lot of running around and getting muddy.

I think Juneau had the most fun out of the three.  She got the most mud on her and her harness. The thing finally looks like it's been used now.

I am finally officially an Oregonian!

Heh, it's taken me a good while but I finally got around to collecting the necessary paperwork for getting an Oregon license and titling and registering the Jeep in Oregon. 
Funny thing is that when I got my Arizona license some years ago my hair was about two and a half feet long.  Now it's only an inch.

Anyways...

We went to Cathedral Hills yesterday.  I meant to go to Dollar Hill but there was a ton of fog everywhere so I decided that Cathedral Hills would be much more fun.  Well, we get there and there's no fog on the trails!  So that was a huge disappointment, but GP was still quite shrouded.

So much so that GP was not visible from Cathedral Hills.

Conker sported a white bandanna instead of his usual orange one.  I dunno why I picked the white one, but I did, and while I much prefer the orange one the white one didn't look too bad.

Note the nearly completely white fog-filled background.

Cloud Hike

Today it was raining, so we went for a hike.  Turns out it was a lot wetter than I'd originally thought and we got completely soaked.  So soaked that my coat weighs 3 pounds too many.  On the way to the trails there was so much water on the road that the Jeep "lifted off" a couple times.  It didn't skid or hydroplane, it just wasn't as solid as I'd liked it to have been. 
My camera was having a fit due to the odd lighting so almost none of the pictures are good.  Anyways... this is what we did.

Was not happy.

Conker wasn't too thrilled to be out in the rain.  We trudged on and I made it fun for him by chasing him around.  At first I attempted to keep my feet somewhat dry but I abandoned that quickly in favor of trying to splash Conker as he avoided the puddles.

The trail is getting foggy.

As we climbed higher he began to loosen up and eventually ignored the rain and acted like he normally does on a hike.  Then we noticed something a bit odd.

Clouds!

GP gets a lot of low clouds but this was the first time I'd been in one in years.  It's incredibly moist (even moreso if it's raining, which it was and never stopped during the hike) and it feels very odd to breathe.

Rain and clouds make Conker look old and worn out.

We goofed off in the clouds for a bit and I got Conker to run through a couple large puddles.  This was funny since even though he and I were both soaked and his feet were plenty wet, he still has his Shiba dignity and would only set foot in a puddle if he must do so, or if it meant getting to bite my jacket.

Blurry makes this picture suck.

Overall the hike was a ton of fun.  Now I remember why I love being out in the rain, and thankfully Conker had a lot of fun too.  I didn't want to have to leave him home or in the Jeep if the rain was too much for him, and now that I know he doesn't mind I don't need to worry about future rain hikes.

It's kinda hard to see how cloudy it was in the pictures, so here's a video of us messin around.

Rain Hike

We went hiking in the rain today.  It was more fun that I thought it would be. 

We'd already gone on our standard 2 mile walk with a stop at MPM on the way home, but I figured that since tomorrow is supposed to be 38 degrees that we'd hike today.  It was raining when we got there but after a couple minutes Conker was ignoring it and being his normal obnoxious self.

This picture would have been better if Conker's face wasn't blurry.

We did something like 5 miles or so and surprisingly Conker is OUT right now.  Normally he putters around for a while and harasses Indy  before he sacks out after a hike.  I guess today he burnt off all his energy stepping off the trail into the burr grass and getting burrs stuck allover his stupid fur then running off when I yelled at him.

Finally went hiking!

Erk man, two weeks without a hike is bad.  Not gonna do that again, even if my feet are killing me.

Today we only did about 4 miles or so.  A little under 1 mile of it was at a slow jog, about 1/4 at a faster jog or run.  It was a nice hike that started out with a jacket and ended with a long sleeved shirt.  It was only 61 degrees today.  That's pretty cold in my book, but the chill weather does something to Conker that seems to turn his never-ending energy mode on. Somewhere along the trail we decided to play a chase game and derped around for a good 10 minutes or so.

Conker did much running at full speed towards then past me.

None of the pictures of this are good.

But some are kinda funny.

Conker was really excited when he figured out that we were going hiking instead of to some lame store.  We pulled into the parking lot and he couldn't wait to get out, and as soon as he was turned loose on the trails he began to sniff everything he could.  He ran allover the place shoving his nose into the leaves and getting burrs stuck to his fur, harness and bandanna. He wanted to run the entire time and would often stop to sniff something then run superfast to catch up to me, then stop and sniff again as I passed him.  He seemed to have a lot of fun today.

VFF

Today we went back to Cathedral Hills and hiked a little over 5 miles. 
We got there a little after 12 and stuck to the outer trails.  Though I stopped several times to take a couple pictures, adjust my shoes and talk at Conker, we still made fairly good time.  Today is supposed to rain, dunno exactly when (weather site said 3 but it's past 3 now) but it did begin to drizzle a bit right as we were nearing the parking lot at 2:15.


The rest of this post is about my shoes, so skip if you want.

Off-Leash Derps

Went hiking today. 

And brought all three dogs with me.

This could easily have gone terribly wrong since I decided to let all of them off their leashes.  Much to my complete surprise, Juneau responded faster than the other two.  Sasha just derped around and Conker was his normal Shiba self who contemplated commands before obeying them.

We only hiked about 3 or so miles on the Outback Loop and Bridges trails.  It was still pretty fun and thankfully we didn't run into any people or the two horses that were on the trails. 
Juneau was a bit scatterbrained when it came to smelling critter trails and shoving her stupid face into the burr grass and getting burrs stuck allover her dumbness, but she was good enough that I never had to permanently put her back on the leash (me holding it).  I think with a bit more training that she could be a good off-leash dog, but for the time being she gets to wear the leash and just drag it around since she is a lot better with it like that.

This picture took more than 10 tries to get.