Just a walk, or, "Hey, Joey! This is why I use a 'cane' "

Yep, this will be a picture post, but I have to set things up by letting the blog world know what the FB world knows.  Namely, that Scrappy and I went to my niece Raine's place to take a walk with her and her pup Piper.

In addition to being the cutest little thing, she is an excellent swimmer, and the only beagle I ever heard of that hates taking the same trail twice- to the point she was digging in and refusing until she got enough leash that she could keep a close nose on Scrappy's butt.

They had a great time for 95% percent of the afternoon- then Scrappy went into his Bill Clinton impression and she wasn't real pleased.

Raine put a couple of pictures up as well...

...leading nephew Joey to go "OMG Why does Uncle Chris have a CANE?", lol!  I'm going to send this post to him and about 2/3 of the way through, he'll figure it out...


So today was a wonderful day for a walk- warm, cloudy, a good refreshing breeze.  As direct sunlight is kryptonite to those of us with black fur on their back (not me, thank you), Scrappy had plenty of energy for a good stroll through the woods.  I soon noticed the camera was almost out of juice, so I had to make every shot count...

...so of course I started with fungi pics...

...and into the forest dark we went!  Unlike Piper, Scrappy is quite content with the trail, be it the tenth time or the tenth time TODAY, but I thought a little EVA, forest style, was appropriate.

Follow the leash.  Yes, that's what my dog thinks is a straight line.

And let's be sure to get into as much mud as possible!

C'mon, IPFW!  Future scientists will think a very small glacier stopped there...

No autumn colors yet, Bobby, but plenty of lovely greens...

So here we have me trying to take a picture of 4 deer in the ravine, holding the button and shouting, "Come ON, you stupid camera, take the shot!"  Followed by the camera going, "Uh, yuh talkin' ta me?", after which I got that.

Next up, suspended selfies...

Looks safe, right?  But pan back...

Yup, the log I was resting my assets on was just a bit OVER the edge of the ravine...

...just enough to give you that SLIGHT funny feeling.


Now, here's the important part, Joey.  You always need a walking stick...

...when you have a beagle trained from a pup to be an explorer...

Next, we went down to the Alumni pond...

This heron was very unwilling to fly away in the stiff breeze, and thus he let us get VERY close...

...even as Scrappy could care less...

...and I thought it would be cool to keep coming as close as we could and get him flying away.  BUT, SOMEbody, thinking he had already shut the camera off (near-dead battery, remember?), shut it off for real just as the bird was about to amscray, and I ended up with this: