Exploring

Darcy, Emma, and I often wander in the mountains on the weekends.  Sometimes, we wander too far.  Jennifer calls it getting lost.  Darcy and Emma and I call it exploring.  I’ve strung together a couple of episodes of exploring lately, returning triumphantly and like people who didn’t get lost but with exhausted and crippled dogs.

This makes Jennifer mad.

Darcy and Emma love exploring. Every weekend they wait with bated breath...

LET’S GO TO THE MOUNTAINS!

…and in a flash of orange…

…Darcy is ready-to-go.

Emma’s reaction involves a few redirects and regaining(s) of consciousness.  I felt obligated to offer photographic proof of her attendance.

This is one from the screening-room floor.  I’m yelling many permutations of her name and making all sorts of crazy sounds at this point.  It’s when I’m quiet and have put my phone/camera down that she does all of her cute stuff.

Darcy is done messing around.

Quit messing around, Daddy.

Darcy settled-down after we arrived at our destination, Loveland Pass.

Emma and Darcy were leashed the entire time we were hiking.

There were a lot of spring-fed streams.  The really weird part was that the stream beds were very flat, like cobble-stone roads.

We hiked towards the light. Darcy liked it.

Then she remembered that she had been running around for an hour at over twelve thousand feet above sea-level.

Emma was very happy, too.

I think that sleep was that much closer for her when there was that much less oxygen.

They both slept on the way home, one more than the other, and were not lame to boot.

Not exploring just was not the same.

September 2018