State Gamelands Hike

The "best winter ever" continues onward, with temperatures being almost 60 degrees today!  No work, dog shows or other commitments meant I was able to fully enjoy it.   I found a cluster of geocaches in a large patch of gamelands, and I took both girl dogs out for a good long day of hiking!

The geocaches were all find able as "stand alone" caches, but each cache contained a number that made up coordinates for a "final" stage geocache.  Fun!  There were also other geocaches hidden, so it made for a really fun day of finding hides, and hiking.   

Gamelands hikes are different for us because there are not generally marked trails.   Many gamelands have trails that ATVs go on, or they do have trails but they are never marked.  You are certainly not going to pick up a trail map on your way in!  One of today's geocaches led us a half mile through the woods and the only "trail" we were following was by imagination.  Maaaaybe this is a trail because it doesn't have any thorns growing on it?  It was a good time to have a functioning GPS unit and love the technology - it made it easy to find our way back to the regular trail!

Here are the girls at "ground zero" of that geocache.   It was called "Where's your Leash, Kona?" because the cache hider's dog got out of his grasp and took off in the woods.  He finally caught up to her at this spot but her leash was gone!   The whole series of geocaches were the "Hiking Huskies" series - so of course I loved that.

Here is my sweet Perri patiently waiting while I search for our DNF! (did not find) geocache of the hike.   I tried two different times but could not locate one hide in the series, a real bummer.  Perri is so good about waiting for me.   She will stay when I ask her to, she settles down into happily chewing a stick or sniffing critter smells and when I am ready to continue, she is too.   Molly has to be tied to a tree and she screeches and digs and has a total fit!

One thing Molly did love was getting to go for a swim!   It was the only time I allowed her off leash all day and she was in her glory.  I was interested to see that Molly was a little bit nervous to jump into the river!   I think it may be a byproduct of our Dock Dogs disaster.   She got over it quickly enough (it wasn't that fake water I was trying to get her to jump into!) and did quite a few jumps into the river.  Crazy, swimming in February.

We had a really really nice time.  Six hours out in the woods on a gorgeous day, it was heavenly.  There is no feeling in the world like watching your previously injured dog being able to run and jump and get dirty and rub in poop and eat deer legs and enjoy the life of a free dog.  It is scary to release that control, but I believe it is necessary.  Perri is strong again.   She stretched nicely today, no guarding or resistance.   I am over the moon.