Not My Usual Morning Routine…

Skunks are extremely active in my area this time of year – and JoJo and I got a not so pleasant reminder about that early this morning….

I was letting Jo out, opening the door to the back deck and BAM – the door hit something…what the???  I look and in the dim light I see a fluffy black body, tail straight in the air – the smell hit me before my sleepy brain could register what was going on – and also unfortunately before I could grab Jo… she burst through the door excitedly to meet the new visitor, and doing what every dog does when meeting someone new – went up to sniff it’s butt…

IMG_2497
FYI: NOT what an actual skunk is like

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Continue reading

The Sensory Trail and the Sunflower Cemetery

SUPERBOWL SUNDAYYYYYY!!!! As I know absolutely NOTHING about football (is that un-American?) I decided I would much rather spend the day outside.  I called up a friend, grabbed JoJo and off we went to explore Blue Marsh Lake.  There are many trails around the lake, but the map is very basic and doesn’t have a lot of the connecting trails on it.  I love kayaking at Blue Marsh, but am not very familiar with the hiking trails so we decided to be adventurous, pick a trail and see where it would take us.  We drove around almost the entire lake before we found a spot where we could park – a lot was blocked off for some reason or had a ton of snow piled up in the parking areas.  We finally found a place to park and according to the map there was a loop trail near by called the Sensory Trail.  We walked over to check it out and saw the trail was only 1/4 mile long – bummer!  So we did the loop twice and sort of explored around the area a bit but it didn’t take us long at all.  We hopped back in the car – determined to go for a longer hike than that and found a parking pull off that was clear of snow.  We got out and started hiking, following the tracks of others.  The snow is only a few inches deep now as we had a warm spell and most of the snow from the blizzard has melted away (no snowshoes needed for this trip!)  We wandered around the trails and came to some fields – we started around the perimeter of one and came to an area covered with dried up sunflowers – I hiked part of a nearby trail in the summer that had TONS of blooming sunflowers – I never knew they were there before and it was so amazing to see.

What the area looks like in the summer – so pretty! 🙂

Continue reading

Backpacking Dreams

So it’s 4:30 am as I’m typing this….I just woke up from a weird/ funny dream.

In the dream JoJo and I were backpacking somewhere and it started to rain like crazy.  I pulled out an umbrella (?? I don’t have a backpacking umbrella- I know some people do, but I do not) and try to hold it up over me as I hike along.  I couldn’t hold the umbrella over me and use my trekking poles at the same time so I decided to set up camp and wait out the rain.

Continue reading

FINALLY got to use my Snowshoes!!

Over the weekend I FINALLY was able to test out my new snowshoes.  The snow was PERFECT – I was able to float right on top of about 2 feet of snow while Kevin, who doesn’t have any, sunk in – up to his knees at some spots!  We were visiting his parents so Joey and I went for a walk in their woods.  It was so beautiful – the only tracks were those of wildlife so it was very easy to walk around on the mostly undisturbed snow.  I have to say it was sort of fun to take my snowshoes off and see how far I sunk in without them!  🙂

Continue reading