Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Washington Tykes do the Harriman Hike (Summer Edition)

Hey, has anyone seen Max?
(click to enlarge)

Yolanda, Max and myself hadn't gone on a group hike since last December, and we figured we were all due for another one. As it happened this one was in Harriman State Park as well, and had many of the same participants--Caroline & Smarties, Melissa & Tender, Marc & Duke. We ended up covering quite a lot of the same ground we'd traversed in winter--it's no less beautiful at this time of year. Lot buggier, though--the dogs picked up a few ticks, but nothing too serious.

Once out of the car, Max was immediately drawn to the lake--but there was no time to swim.


Tender.



We weren't doing the full loop--we took a break at a trail shelter, before heading back the way we came.

A young White-tailed Deer viewed us from a distance while we were at the shelter. The dogs were apparently unaware of its presence, though Tender started sniffing around in that direction. In this case, better vision and the higher vantage point achieved via bipedal locomotion trumped a superior sense of smell and hearing. One reason humans and dogs got together in the first place was that our senses are complementary, each species picking up on things the other misses.


Max does his deer impression.

We passed a beautiful freshwater marsh, with an impressive beaver lodge (Yolanda thinks she saw one of the tenants briefly). Which more than made up for the fact that we'd gone quite a good ways past the trail we needed to take in order to go back to the parking lot.

Mild skepticism was expressed at this point regarding the efficacy of Marc's recently obtained GPS device with regards to trail-hiking. (photo by Caroline Sickinger)

"Why does Marc need GPS when he already has DPS?"

Smarties.



The paws that refreshes.

On the right trail at last, and not too far from the parking lot, we had a nice sit-down.




"We're almost back? Can't we go up and come down again a few more times?"

Melissa taking a picture of me.
Me taking a picture of Melissa taking a picture of me taking a picture of Melissa.....

Smarties and Duke.

Smarties made herself a nice cool scrape to lie in.

And everybody took a nice dip in the lake before we went home. Well, not quite everybody, but I felt cooler just watching them.


Max finally had some quality time with Lake Skannatati.

(some of the above photos taken by Yolanda Garcia)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just want to set the record straight, it was the biped who was giving the finger to the GPS that led us in the wrong direction, it was the GPS that got us going in the right direction.

BTW thank you for not taking pictures of us swimming.

Melissa said...

You just can't let it go can you Marc! I guess we all know where you loyalties lie. Regardless of us taking the yellow trail a bit too far, it was a great day of hiking.

Anonymous said...

I will agree with you that it was a great day.

Anonymous said...

Great hike report.

I almost feel like I'm there.

Let's do it again!

Chris said...

It was not my intent to arouse further controversy in the matter of the botched trail navigation (which face it, we all botched equally). Neither was I out to provide evidence of any illicit aquatic activities. Say no more, nudge nudge. ;)