A typical walk part VII

We were invited on a Brown County excursion this weekend, but how can you really top what we have right here? Last night we took a sunset walk, and among the other events of the trip, you got a spectacular view of yellow and orange leaves backlit by a yellow and orange sun from the inside. (Really wish at that point I'd have took the camera.) The "other events" being a glimpse of 2 deer a ways off and another round of Scrappy's "new trick"-running over a hole that doesn't have a particularly interesting scent (and thus ignored) and falling chin first into it.

This morning, my goal was to reach the woods with dry feet, a challenge with a moderately heavy dew. The soccer fields were white with frost burning off as we watched. The meadow, though, was already out of the shadows and drier, so we went in the first side entrance. We followed the main trail, orange with fallen leaves, down to the ravine trail. The east side was full of squirrels. About halfway down I decided to go down into the ravine and explore. Scrappy is a good one for this- attempting to go down where it's too steep, refusing to go down when I start, wrapping me in his line just as I start down. Eventually we get down in one piece, and backtrack along the edge. Soon we found a trail that took us to the creek. It ran along the south bank and led us to a score of pretty overlooks and landings, which Scrappy took full advantage of to go splashing along. He would love me to go wading with him; he gets mad when I won't follow him along where the shore disappears.

We dove and weaved amongst the trail and pseudo-trails most of the way to the bridge at the Plex entrance. About halfway between the entrance and the fireplug on California to the west, there is a 30-ft wide space that the trees were ripped out almost to the creek bank for some reason, and allowed to grow into tall grass. ( There's another unexplainable spot like this, though much smaller, just on the southeast side of the woods bridge.) As we crossed that, the trail (at least the section big enough for ME) died off, and we went up the tall grass and out a side trail to the roadside.

As we entered the Plex, three big deer ran across the road to the woods. Scrappy saw them, gave them his by-now-famous dumbfounded look, and decided to chase them by going the wrong way. Once I convinced him to go the right way, he aggressively followed their scent until, as usual, he lost it when I decided I wasn't going down the trails I assume are on the north side of the creek to follow them. Satisfied with the morning walk, I headed us up the Plex road towards home. Before we left, I saw one more neat sight- perched on one of the flag-stakes that IPFW uses to delineate the cross-country path, was a momma bluebird. Scrappy didn't notice; he was too busy designing a way to catch his line on the stake.