Pine Grove Trip

Yesterday the dogs and I headed over to my parents' property in Pine Grove. It was the perfect day for it too! It was overcast, rainy off and on, and generally not so great west of Mt. Hood, but east of Mt. Hood it was actually pretty nice once you got over the wind factor. I have a general rule of thumb that whenever I'm driving some where, I prefer to be at my location for at least the amount of total time I will spend driving there and back. Since the drive is two hours each way, that means that our Pine Grove trips are day trips.

After two hours in the truck, the dogs literally burst out of the truck bed when I pulled down the tail gate. They were wild hounds on the loose and happy to be able to stretch their legs and just run wherever they pleased. We headed over to the little cabin that my dad is building and the dogs were very excited to see their grandpa, until Bess found the skull that my dad has lying around there for some reason. It has become her most treasured thing to chew on. And chew she did!


After some chewing and romping around the camp site we headed off on a hike for a few hours. There are generally two primary routes that we follow when heading out on a hike. One route doesn't have very many watering holes along the way and the other does. I didn't really feel like packing around the backpack with all the water that I had brought, so we headed off on "watering hole" route. For a while, the skies were clear and it was actually starting to warm up quite a bit. The wind was a bit annoying, but it was more of a breeze as we descended into some of the near by canyons.



Occasionally there was some bush whacking involved.
And I took advantage of the fields to practice Bess' sit stays.
He he he.....just kidding! I get some sort of twisted enjoyment out of capturing my dogs peeing! No idea why, just do.:0)

After a while the clouds very gradually crept in and the wind kicked up more. After a few hours of hiking around, we headed back to camp to try and relax a little.
As more ominous clouds rolled in and the wind kicked up to a ridiculous level, we decided to head down to the general base of the hill so that we'd be buffered from the wind and we could do a little hiking around the rock quarries that I've never explored before with the dogs.

After a few hours of hiking the dogs had thankfully mellowed and seemed pretty happy to relax in the back of the truck. Until we got to the rock quarry. Apparently forced confinement when there is the promise of further exploration is enough to rejuvenate them. Once I put the tail gate down again they sprang out like we had just gotten there. We only hiked around that area for about another hour before calling it a day and heading home.

It was a pretty good way to spend a Sunday! The dogs were pretty contentedly exercised and so was I.

I hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day holiday!!