Mommy is Crazy, or, Our Daylight Savings Day Hike

Mommy and I have a tradition of taking an all day hike on Daylight Savings Day.  This started because we didn't do it on my first Daylight Savings Day and when Mommy told me it was bedtime an hour earlier than usual I thought she was kidding.  She went to bed and I joined her and jumped up and down on her and poked her with squeaky toys and bit her feet and stuff and got myself so wound up I didn't go to sleep until 2 hours after our regular bedtime or 3 hours after Mommy TRIED to go to bed.  So, the next year she started the Daylight Savings Day Hike.  We'd get out early in the morning and not come home until sunset.  We'd usually hike between 20 and 30 miles that day and I'd be so tired that night that bedtime couldn't come too soon.

This morning Mommy woke up and looked out the window and said, "Oh, its raining. No all day hike today, but we can go somewhere this afternoon."  When this afternoon rolled around it was STILL raining.  Mommy hated to not take a Daylight Savings Day Hike so she packed up our stuff and off we went to the state park for a short hike.  When we got there there were two cars parked in the lot with fishermen huddling in them and the ranger truck was there with the rangers huddling in it, but Mommy would not be deterred and off we went.  The trail was a combination of ice and slush and besides rain, there was fog.

The beginning of the hike, looking out over the frozen lagoon

Mommy thought the fog was bad when we started but about a half mile into the hike the trail looked like this

 I'm glad it is a new moon tomorrow and not a full moon

or there might have been werewolves in that

When we got to the half way point we heard a bunch of red-winged blackbirds and grackles complaining and then Mommy spotted them up in a tree yelling at this guy.

 See the little bird above him yelling insults?

He is a young hawk of some kind we think either a red-tail or a red-shoulder, but we don't know for sure because the fog obscured him too much.  It started to really rain hard after the bird spotting and about a quarter of a mile down the trail we discovered that the runoff from the snow melt and rain combined to make a small creek for us to wade through.  It was about 24 feet wide and eight inches deep.  It is a good thing Mommy has hooves instead of feet or she might have been cold walking the rest of the trail because her boots did not keep her feet dry at all once the water went over the toes, and in fact her left boot split on the instep when she was half way across so her left boot totally filled with water.  Shortly before we got back to the car the rain turned into more of a solid mist, but that didn't help us much. Mommy stripped off her soaked jacket, hat and gloves when we got to the car and she debated about taking off her boots but decided against it.  I got a nice rubdown with the towel and home we went.

What I look like after hiking two miles in the rain

I'm not talking to Mommy

I think maybe Mommy should reconsider sticking with some of her traditions.