Dog Day

After a long week of work, I decided that I needed to do something fun for myself today. Initially, I thought about going camping, I have yet to do so this summer. I enjoy getting out and hiking, cooking hot dogs and roasting marshmallows over a fire. I like exploring new places, but I'm not crazy about the whole sleeping on the ground thing. Tent camping is my preferred method of spending my time in the great outdoors though.

The weather wasn't quite right for camping though, it was supposed to be rainy off and on today and the temperatures overnight in the mountains would possibly drop into the upper 30s, which is a bit cold for my taste. Instead, I opted to take my dog and my dad's for a hike. There's an open space dog park a few miles away from here that has miles of trails that are all in an off-leash area.

With the temperatures topping out in the lower 70s and cloud cover to boot, it was my kind of weather for long walks. I'm definitely not a big fan of temperatures much over 75 degrees and it being late August, there has been plenty of temperatures above my comfort zone. The park usually has a pond, but this year it has remained dry and I haven't brought the dogs in a while because with nowhere to swim, the weather has been too hot during the daylight hours.

There is a small farmer's canal that runs through the open space park and today it was flowing as full as I have ever seen it. Jonesy loves to swim, but my dad's dog, Danger, while fully capable of doing so, hates to swim. We walked alongside the canal for a while and both dogs ended up splashing along it for a while.

Near this particular park, there is also an airport, so while we hiked around the trails, I got to watch a couple of jets take off and land. Normally around this time of year, there's an airshow at the airport, but it was moved to a different location due to construction.

All in all, this was a pleasant afternoon spent with the dogs, enjoying nature. There are some wildflowers still growing at this point in the season, but a couple of months ago, they were everywhere. The one drawback to this park (other than proximity to the Rocky Flats site) is that there are prickly pear cactus growing throughout the area. Jonesy had the misfortune of tripping over a cactus that was hidden under a pile of tumbleweeds. He hates having his feet touched, so I pulled out the bigger needles and he seemed not to be bothered by anything until we got home and he spent an hour picking the smaller needles out of his paws.