Ryan and Chase go for a Hike

The coolest thing about being in school right now is that I only have to work until 12:00. I don't have classes everyday, so this Thrusday I decided to take Chase on a hike. Let me tell you how much this dog loves to be outdoors. Well I can't really cause I don't really know, he can't talk, but seems like he really likes it. Whenever I get out the Camelbak without even asking if he wants to "Go Bye Bye" (and believe me he knows what that means) he starts to follow me around the house. When I start to fill it up he starts to whine and keeps going to the front door. By the time I get my boots on he really knows it's for real that we are going somewhere cool. It's funny how a dog can link things like this to fun and he knows what's going on.

I decided on going to Battle Creek Canyon in PG. For those of you in Utah, its the canyon directly north of the G on the bench. It was really awesome outside that day. Sunny, low 60's, I think, and the trees were awesome. Scenery was great. I was on the lookout for deer, but nothing. Last time I was out there with my bro Garside, a huge gobbler shot out from no where making the noise that turkeys make and needless to say I thought I peed my pants, but I didn't. But now I hate turkeys. Three reasons, they are ugly, they can scare you, and they have no respect for the right-of-way on roads. I almost hit one today on my bike on South Fork Rd. Once again it just darted out in from of me. If anyone ever wants a cool hike, go there cause there is everything: cool river, waterfalls (if you get back there far enough), sheer cliffs it's pretty cool. Anyways no one is going to read this so on with the pics.

This is the trailhead. It starts off being a gravel path, but the farther you get up there the better the trail gets and it turns into a good footpath. The bug is checking out another dog's terd in the bottom right of the pic. I don't know why he has to do that, it's gross.

Chase likes to stand in the water until I get so far that he can't see me and then he comes running up.

See he looks happy?????

There was still ice up there. It's been cold here and the ice in the shade doesn't melt.

Here are two waterfalls. They were pretty awesome. They were really flowing probably cause of all the snow melting higher up.

This picture isn't a total cliff where it drops off, but is very steep and covered in flat smooth pieces of broken shale. It's a couple hundred feet down at least 100ft. Needless to say if I were to fall down it I would not be able to get back up it. but not my dog. I was thinking of how cool it would be to throw a rock down there and see how far it would go. So I got one and threw it. As soon as I heard it hit, I hear a ton of rocks just go slidding down this drop off. First instinct was sweet a deer!!!, but duh, my dog decided to live up to his breed's name sake "retriever". I know he didn't see where it hit, cause I couldn't. But he took it upon himself to chase (now you know why he is named Chase) the rock down there. I FREAKED out. All I thought was how am I going to go get him? I won't be able to go back up let alone drag him up. At that point I almost started to swear. Mind you this all happened in 2 seconds. At this point Chase has created an avalance of sharp little jagged pieces of rocks coming at him and I start yelling "Chase stop no!!!!" He either had one of two thoughts 1. "oh my, this is steep and these rocks hurt, I had better stop." or 2. "Oh my, Master Ryan is freaking out, I better go back and help him get down this so we can go get whatever it is that he threw down there." Because as soon as I freaked out he hit the breaks with all four. But what happens when you do that in gravel? You slid. now he is slidding and turned back around looking at me with eyes that are now scared because his ears are flat against his head and his eys are bugging out to the point where I can see white all round his eyes. He has only gone down about 20ft right now. He finally got the rocks around him to stop slidding down, and found solid ground to grab hold of. Now for what amazed me. I was about to try to go grab him another, way, but to my amazment he just starts to jump up the rocks. He doesn't run, but he just calmly jumps about three times, gets to the trail, turns around to look back down and lays down for a few seconds while I just stare at him angry for doing such a stupid thing. He just looked at it for a few seconds realizing that it hadn't been a good idea to follow that rock. On our way back I was pretty confident he could make it back up that area, I threw another rock down and he watched turned his head and trotted off down the trail ignoring my calls to come back. I think he really did get himself in a pickle and got scared. No that I look back at it it was really funny. At the time I was freaking.

And finally this is a pretty cool campsite we found about an hour up the trail. We will be staying there some day.

And that was our hike. It was really fun. If anyone wants to do some fall hiking let me know, it's awesome out right now.