22 Miles at Vogel State Park

I hurt!! I'm not sure if they're connected but yesterday (1/18/2010) I did the most amazing hike I went 22 miles total (mom, dad and Greg only did a measly 13) and got to be outside running around all day. The hike was a great workout, short on vistas but a lot of fun!




The adventure started the night before when we drove out to Vogel state park. As if the drive wasn't bad enough I had to stay on the leash all evening while mom, dad and their friend Greg cooked dinner outside in the snow, poked the fire, and tried not to freeze. Then they expected me to sleep in a tent. It was cold, the floor was hard and I could hear all the animals outside that I should be chasing. At about 2AM, after trying to break through the tent walls about 9 times, I finally convinced dad to take me outside but instead of going for a walk he made me sleep with him in the car. How frustrating, with just a little more time I'm sure I could have gotten out of the tent.





After a very boring night the next day was great! At about 7:30AM I leaned on the car horn to wake everyone up and around 9 they finally got out of bed. After a quick breakfast we headed out on the trail. Mom and dad complained about not seeing many vistas but I was just happy I got to run around for 8 hours straight. After the hike, Dad tied my leash to Petunia's thinking that would keep us from running far, but all Petunia and I wanted to do was sleep! We got in the car and crashed.

Pre-Christmas in West Virginia

For Christmas mom and dad got me this annoying GPS device. It's attached to my harness and everytime I go hiking I have to wear it. The upside is when I get home I can figure out where I've been and share it with all of you. So, I started this blog to share my trips. For my first post I'm going to talk about the amazing hikes I did over the Christmas holiday. All in all it was a great time (except for the car rides).

For the first part of trip we stayed in a cabin in West Virginia with all of mom's family. There was about 2 feet of snow on the ground which made hiking especially fun. Our first hike was a short loop near the cabin. I was still getting used to all the snow so I stuck pretty close to mom and dad. After we got back inside someone left the door open for me so I got away and raced around back behind the cabin across from ours. I had smelled something really fun there earlier, but no one had let me check it out. It was great racing in the moonlight, until Michael caught up with me.

The next morning dad took me out to the sledding hill to get a little exercise. After going up and down the hill twice and checking out the pond and the rental building, I got bored with going up and down and found some deer to track. After about an hour and a half I got tired and decided to let dad catch up. He didn't seem very happy, I mean what's better than running in the woods in two feet of snow for an hour and a half? Not much. The snow slowed me down some but I did manage to hit a top speed of 20 mi/hour.

After leaving West Virginia we headed for grandma and grandpa's in northern Virginia. We did a bunch of walks and even a run and had several great hikes at Scott's Run. The second hike I ran all over creation, right up to people's back yards, until I got put back on leash. There were deer, I know it. On the second one I hit my best speed so far, 23 MPH! It was downhill, but it still counts.

After returning to Georgia we had our last hike of the holiday at a great park very close to home. The Sweetwater Creek rapids were beautiful, even though dumb park rules kept me on a leash the whole time.