Mormon Emigrant Trail

Commando and I drove up the Mormon Emigrant Trail. My intent was to find the North-South road and trace it back. We hiked for about an hour off of the road through a pine forest. I was stopped by snow and couldn't continue.

I wanted to check out the Light Canyon road so drove there too. It was snowed in so we came back to Houck road and hiked up to an overlook with some weather monitoring equipment at the top. Great views!

Google Earth

Interesting that Google has loaded pre-Katrina pictures for New Orleans. It's funny to see the Katrina images marked (rescue helicopter) and the image is no longer there. Still, I wonder why they did it?

Grizzly Flats Again

I couldn't quite get motivated to leave as early as I'd planned but we finally did hit the road. I was NOT happy to discover that REI has stopped selling the printable maps from the kiosk and printer thingie. Dur. The first clerk I asked was blase, but when a second one asked if I'd found everything okay he was livid when I mentioned it. He said, "That's like KFC not selling chicken! Don't get me started."

We hiked off of Caldor road and also somewhere near Leoni Meadows. A guy stopped my in downtown Grizzly Flats to ask how to get to the freeway. He'd tried to drive up Capps Crossing based on his GPS directions but the road is blocked with snow. I told him he was miles and miles from the freeway and that he'd need to head to Placerville. Good luck to him.

Oh, I hiked instead of snowshoed because I forgot my damn boots at home. Dammit.

Rhodesian ridgeback mix

Commando was called an australian shepherd mix at the shelter. I just found that impossible to believe because his coat is short and he just looks nothing like a shepherd. I've been searching pictures of dog breeds and I think he looks the most like this dog, a Rhodesian ridgeback mix named Gracie. I'm not sure why I bothered with this search, but it's just interesting I guess. Except for the color, these two dogs could be twins.

Dog Mobile and SNOW (finally!)

On Saturday went to a Dog Mobile at the Home Show at Cal Expo. The lead was sick, my back hurt, and the other dog handler has a chronic bad back so we were hurting. We took Alex and Meredith. They had a good time and were noticed by a lot of people. A family seemed quite taken with Meredith, but I'm not sure it would be a good fit. She's older, and has early arthritis and they're a young family. She may not like kids playing roughly. We'll see if she gets adopted.

On Sunday Commando and I drove up to Grizzly Flat and snowshoed for about 2 hours. We went down Big Canyon Loop Road whatever that was. On our way in a snowshoer flagged us down and asked for directions. I hope he makes it out alright because he headed back into the woods where he had been disoriented before.

The snow was perfect! It was about 2 feet deep and nice and wet so flotation wasn't a problem. Commando had fun leaping in and out of the snow and trying to make headway in the (for him) chest deep stuff. I stopped every once in a while to see if he was okay, but he kept wanting to push on. He made many forays into the pines to sniff out birds or whatever else he feels compelled to sniff. It was warm and sunny and I only wish I could live up there and snowshoe everyday.