Between Storms

Yesterday, I took Hope for another hike at Cronan Ranch. I ended up going a little later as I was waiting to see how the weather was panning out for the day as we were between storms. When it looked like it was going to be clear, I packed up my rain gear (just in case), and we headed out.

We took a trail that had great views of the river, right where we were going.  I also explored trails I hadn't been on before thinking they might end up at a different place where we could access the river for Hope to swim.  But, we came up empty.  The one trail I found had a great swimming hole where the water was really calm, but I could see some green stuff (like algae) in some spots. Hope just got done with puke-fest a few weeks ago, the last thing I needed was for her to get sick again. When I looked at my GPS, we had already hiked about 5 miles by the time we hiked back up the looong hill and she hadn't even had a chance to go swimming yet.

We ended up finding another trail that connected to the same swimming spot I've been taking her (and Nick) to.  But, boy, what a difference a week makes.  I don't know if its because we just had rain or if it was because we went a little later in the day or what...but the river was raging compared to last week.  The huge calm eddy that she had been swimming in last week only had a small area of calm water near the edge, the rest of the water was moving pretty fast.  I was surprised that even the area where it didn't look so fast was actually really moving as Hope got into that area for a bit when she lost the stick she was chasing and and it started taking her downstream.  I still let her swim but mostly kept her near the edge of the water.  I didn't really want to find out the hard way whether she was a strong enough swimmer to handle the fast moving water...

It was so nice and sunny that we ended up sitting next to the river for another 20 minutes or so while I ate a snack and Hope just chilled next to me for a rest.  By the time we got back to the car, I was surprised that we had hiked about 7.5 miles.  Another good hike...and so nice to be outside.

The parking lot below Hope is where we started our hike...

American River below is where we are headed...

A close-up shot of the river down below...

Almost there...

And, finally a little video of our fun day!...