County Hiking Challenge 2012--Hike 9/12

Mommy worked in the yard most of the day yesterday and all this morning after our walk.  When she finished working in the yard she came into the house and got everything ready for a hike.  She had planned to do a 2.6 mile hike down at the far end of the county, but when she said, "Okay! Let's go!" I ran to my bed and lay down. Mommy said, "Don't you want to go for a hike?" and I said no I did not.  Mommy then said, "It is too nice a day for you to be moping around the house and not hiking. How about we do the last really short one on the list? You like that hike. It's the froggy hike." I thought about it a bit and got up and agreed to go because I like the froggy hike. 

We hiked at this preserve a lot when I was recovering from having my toe amputated because this preserve is just two short loops, one inside the other, around a lake. Depending on how you string the loops together you can hike 1 mile, 1.2 miles, 1.3 miles, 1.5 miles, 1.8 miles or 2 miles so it was a perfect recuperation hiking spot.  The official hike was the 1.3 mile hike.

When we got out of the car we could see that the lake was full of Canada geese. This is only about a quarter of the goose flock. There were a lot of dogs on the trails today because the weather was so nice, and they were all on leashes.  Mommy thinks maybe seeing all those geese right off made people realize they needed to leash their dogs.

I lagged behind from the very start of the hike.  Mommy is trying to figure out how I took this picture of her because the leash is going in the wrong direction to be attached to me, but we know it was attached to me and not some other dog.

Hiking down to the fishing pier wasn't on the official hike, but I insisted on going down there to look for frogs.  There were none. When we got to what used to be a farmer's field with a sign that said, "NO TRESPASSING" we found a different sign that said, "DO NOT ENTER. TRAILS UNDER CONSTRUCTION. AREA NOT SAFE FOR GENERAL PUBLIC" This is very exciting because it means that the forest preserves bought out the farmer's field next door and, hopefully that also means the woods, two other little lakes, and the creek next to the field so this preserve will have even more trails soon and some developer won't be able to put big ugly houses up right next to the current trails.  When we got to the spot where the big loop connects with the little loop I insisted on going down the little loop so that I could get to the second fishing pier to look for frogs. There were no frogs there either! In fact, I didn't see a single frog on the entire hike, at the froggy hike no less!

When we were about two thirds of the way through the hike Mommy started singing "One of these things is not like the others." because she spotted that heron out with the geese. That is almost as embarrassing as polkaing to her car. Anyway, maybe he is why I didn't see any froggies today.

Mommy really liked this art shot I took of the fall leaves on the ground.  She is thinking of printing it out and framing it.

Here is a shot Mommy took from the lookout spot. If you bigify it you can see some people on the grassy part by the shore. They are about 30 feet from the parking lot. They arrived and gathered there a few minutes after we started our hike and they all got into their cars and drove off a few minutes before we finished our hike. Mommy and I don't understand people who come to a preserve and never go farther than 30 feet from their cars, but a lot of people seem to do that.

Anyway, with the added in side trips to the piers the hike totaled 1.8 miles.