Summer Hike!

And Vegas' first hike in almost 9 months! Yes, I'm trying to conquer our - my - fear of reinjury. Every limp, off step, or stumble causes me heart palpitations, but she seems to be holding up just fine and was thrilled to get out on a hike.

We headed out about 7:15 am on Sunday out Highway 26 (Oregon) toward the coast range. There was a logging road I hiked with a friend a couple months ago and I figured we'd hit that up again. Well, turned out it was closed because they are logging it again so we were at a dilemma. I decided to keep going up the highway in hopes of finding another logging road that was open. We had success in just a couple of miles and this stop-over had two logging roads from which to choose. One looked like it paralleled the highway at least for a bit but was less traveled if all the grass grown over the road was any indication. The other headed off into the woods and appeared to be all gravel.

We selected the road less traveled (left) and headed out. I had my backpack, plenty of bottles of water, dishes, poop bags, some cherries for a snack, my camera, my 14 year-old son, and all three dogs along.

Vegas running pell-mell to catch up to Mama.  

I wish I remembered what these berries were. They were seriously abundant out there on the left trail.

The left trail, we learned, while beautiful, did parallel the highway for the most part, even while drifting North, and soon ended at a road. We weren't sure where the road would have taken us, but it surely was no longer a forest service road and thus the dogs would have had to go back on leash. So we turned back from where we came with plans to head out on the other (right) trail.

Before we did, though, see what we saw?

So off on the other trail we went. It was graveled all the way with that large-ish gravel designed to support log trucks. Not the greatest for walking on but certainly better than beating our own trail. The good news about this trail, too, is that it was mostly in the shade! The other logging roads I had originally thought about were mostly out in the open and exposed to the sun due to all the clear cuts. The shade is very welcome when highs were going to reach nearly 90 yesterday and even early in the morning, upper 60s and low 70s is a bit much for all of us to do much in the way of lengthy exertion.

Yes, Mama, I'll pose. But just for a minute.

Just keep sniffing, just keep sniffing...  Lots of "scat" out there. Likely coyote. No deer or elk pellets surprisingly despite all the tracks we saw.

Russian Thistle, I believe... ? (Thanks, James.)

I use an awesome app on my Android device called Map My Walk/Hike. It tracked our distance. We went just over 4 miles with varying elevations. You can see the details here. This has been important not only for my own fitness, but to monitor what I put Vegas through. She managed well and this is the farthest we have been thus far since we started back on the road to rehabilitation.

                    Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyHike

               

Everybody came home and crashed pretty good until mid-afternoon when they all wanted dinner. No ill effects so I'm excited to get her out again to enjoy the great outdoors.