Walk on a Sunny Day
Carol is at work today and I'm home with too much work to do. So the right thing to do was to take the dogs for a walk on a beautiful, unseasonably warm day (+18 F) to clear my head and let me process things. I had my dogs Mardy and Izzi along, as well as one of Carol's, Ivy.
We went up to what we call the Alder Trail or the Alder Chute Trail (deliberate play on words), a very nice stroll through the woods near where we live west of Fairbanks. It is an out and back trail, something like a couple of miles each way, with varying grades of up on the outbound. The trail was packed by light snow machine traffic and at least one skier, so it was soft and punchy. Perfect for getting the cobwebs out and stretch me out for the skijor races I'm doing tomorrow.
The dogs frequently went off the trail, doing a porpoise move through the rather deep, soft snow along the trail. Here Izzi returns to the packed trail:
One of many reasons I love winter in Alaska are days like this, even though today is warm:
I was originally going to take our usual route to the Chute, a rather steep part of the Equinox Marathon trail, but there had been no traffic on that part of the trail. This shot is looking up that part of the trail.
We forged straight ahead, still following the semi-packed trail, a section that I'd never been on. It soon turned south, away from the chute, and began descending steeply. So after another half mile or so, we decided to turn around.
One of the favorite walking activities of some of our dogs is to attempt to explain to lowly squirrels just why they are so lowly (Mardy's the champ at this). Here is a shot of all three dogs as they finish their lesson to the neighborhood squirrel. Ivy is on the left, mugging for the camera. Izzi is showing her butt on the right. And you can just see the triangle of Mardy's nose in the upper center as she looks skyward toward the squirrel, safely out of reach 20 feet above the ground.
I stopped to take this picture on the way home. It is looking northeast from Henderson Road to the Goldstream Valley, which lies north of Fairbanks.
Geez, I love Alaska!