A Walk In The Park

I can't call it "hiking," because that would technically be exercise, and I simply can't be associated with such a thing. But we did spend the afternoon at Lake Maria State Park, west of Monticello. We took Ozark, because he's such a sweet, good boy and deserved a special outing. Darwin would have been a ton of fun (or at least 72 pounds' worth), but I would have had to have both shoulders put back in their sockets, and we would have had to walk him through a car wash on the way home to get rid of the mud and pond-slime.

It was a beautiful day for a walk. The sky was brilliant, with just enough clouds. It was about 60 degrees, and cool enough on the wooded trails for a jacket. We sat by the lake for a while, then walked about 3 miles through marsh grass as tall as I am, over sun-splashed, grassy hills, and along trails through old-growth forest.

Much of the time, Ozark was off-leash. He never went very far ahead of us, and every time Tom would stop and try to take a picture or video clip, Ozark would stop and turn, looking at us as if to say, "Hey, why are you stopping?" and then he'd trot back to us, sitting at our feet.

Lake Maria is such a nice park. The natural diversity, the clearly-marked trails, the lakes, the old-growth forest... and on a State Fair weekend, we encountered few people. We hadn't been there in years, despite it being only a half hour from our house. We'll be going back more, though, now that we've re-familiarized ourselves with it. They also have remote cabins for rent. We did that once, ages ago, but may look into it as an overnight/weekend getaway next season.

And now, what you've all been waiting for... the pictures of Ozark!

Well, great. Blogger isn't letting me upload any more pictures for some reason. I'll try again, but might end up trying to just start a new post with just the pictures. Grrr. I'm blaming it on the fact that I'm using our "other" laptop, since mine died on Friday and is currently at the hospital seeing if it can be resurrected... and my data recovered. Sigh.

Wait. Here's another plan. I posted photos to Facebook, and this link might allow you to see them!