Weekends with Scrappy

Imagine, if you will:  Daylight breaks, and a beagle clambers out from underneath a heavy plush blanket.  He walks up the bed, tail wagging vigorously- not fast, but with a lot of force behind each switch.  He circles into the space between the right side of your chest and your right arm as you lay semi-conscious on your back.  He leans onto your chest, putting his right front leg around your neck in a half hug- you feel his claws initially dig in as if he was a cat kneading.  He stares you in the face for just a second or two, just long enough to lick the end of your nose once or twice.  And then he places his head so one eye is pressed against your nose, and the other is staring into your free eye, watching to see if you are paying attention or looking away.  If you look away, the other paw inserts itself into your nose and none-too-gently turns your head back to himself.

GOOD MORNING, DADDY!

And that's how we start the weekend, usually.  After he gets his breakfast it's time to go for the morning adventure.
The bigger flowers are finally coming out.

We go down to Scrappy's landing to check out how high the river has gotten...

...and it's pretty high.  Y'know, I always talk about Scrappy's landing, but I don't think I've ever actually put it on here.  Here you go...

Now normally the trail to the landing is fairly well defined.  But lately the hollyhocks are trying to obscure the entrance (or in this case, the exit)-

-at least I call them hollyhocks, I don't really know what they are.  But they are big, bushy, and smell good.



Down the way, when they "rebuilt the trail" to a more greenway-like standard, they took a few too many trees out where the river bends close.  As a result, they put up an orange safety fence.  But all that rain has now caused the bank to slide...

...the moral of the story being, cut the hollyhocks and leave the damn trees!

Moving on, I decided to cut back to the woods to see if any nature was abounding.  I was skeptical after seeing what I thought were socceristas ahead.  But it wasn't socceristas...

...it was a trail run!  They had over a hundred people of all ages, shapes, and sizes, complete with a dj/announcer and music that drowned out my earbuds for a considerable distance.  Of course, Scrappy was in hog heaven meeting all these people, and I had fun ragging the "runners" who, despite announcements of awards, had given up and were walking.  Now one thing you should know about where they were running:  the meadow and fields on the west side of the Plex road do NOT drain well.  many runners were splattered with mud, especially one little girl so bad off it looked like she'd fell butt-first into one of Scrappy's beloved water puddles.

So into the woods (where I finally heard MY music again) and up the trail we went. We got a lesson in the condition of my eyesight when we ventured into a very soggy woods to check out a large white object I thought might be a puffball.  It turned out to be a rather small plastic bag, and I turned back to the trail shaking my head and saying, "THAT'S what I saw?"

Then we encountered a row of hay bales across the trail...

...and I wondered at its significance until I got to the other side and turned around...

We proceeded up the dirt section (or should I say the goop section) of the trail, mainly to get away from the runneristas.  We found out we had nothing to worry about from them in this section, both because of the goopitude of the trail...

...and the rather large stump that was fallen across the trail about three quarters of the way to the trailhead.

Despite the looks of the day, we got home relatively dry;  now I can relax while Scrappy takes a nap.