Oh, those hills, so much fun!

Today we again headed to Harvey Bear to tackle some more hills, Fin and I. She is on her "flexi" due to Dr.s orders. She is supposed to use the freedom to trot back and forth on the hills. Here's the truth. Even with all the freedom, she walks or paces up hills right next to me or in front of me. She hates the uphill almost as much as me.

As we got going today there was a couple walkers with their dog walking slow in front of me and as I passed them they started yelling for me to stop. I'm like, "huh?" They pointed and I looked. What I saw was a big ass rattlesnake curled up with his head sitting on his coiled body and his rattles sticking up in the middle and every once in a while he gave his tail a little shake.

Hmmm. Now this is a quandary. I guess I'll stand still. Fortunately we were on an uphill and Fin was by my side. We waited and he eventually slithered off into the grass. By then there was quite a few of us standing around including a number of walkers, 3 dogs, 2 horses, and 4 bikers. No one wanted to go first. I'm like, heck, the trail is 4-5 feet wide, he's off in the grass, I think I'm safe and off I went, followed by the bikers then the horses and finally the rest of the walkers. Of course, then I get to the gate and have to hold it open for all the bikers and the horses.....but it was better to have them in front of me anyway. It is pretty steep going from the gate to the top.

Once on the flat or down hill, Fin is a wandering fool. Trots all over the place, newest game, trot out to the end of the Flexi and trot back for a cookie. Rinse and repeat. But once we hit an uphill, all trotting stops. It never occurred to me that uphill could be as hard on the dogs as it is on me. My job is watching for more snakes...after our earlier encounter, I kept my head up and watched the trail ahead so she would be safe.

There was alot of green, but evil foxtails lurked everywhere. Really bad this season. If Fin even thought of wandering off the trail she'd have something sticky in her feet and we'd have to stop and pull thorns and foxtails outta her hair and feet.

There was also some flowers still blooming in all that dried grass.

I didn't see any cows and I wonder if there is so much overgrowth and foxtails due to the lack of cows. They must be on other parts of the park as we usually run into alot of them.