My worlds collided...

On Saturday, I went up to Auburn for a nice hike with Hope near the Confluence (where the North/Middle fork of the American River meet...).  How this hike came together was rather funny as certain aspects of my life came together through some common bonds.  What's that saying about six degrees of separation? Here goes...

• Hope and I joined an animal-assisted therapy organization called Lend A Heart last month...
• When I was at the CCI Crab Feed last week, I saw a Lend A Heart (LAH) volunteer who was part of the team evaluating Hope and I last month. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to talk to her at the Crab Feed as I was in line to buy a drink and didn't know where she was sitting. Before she walked off to her table, I saw her talking to a guy in a kilt...
• I thought to myself, I wonder if that guy in the kilt is a geocacher?  There's a group of geocachers in the area who dress in kilts (don't ask me why, but they do...)...
• I emailed her back asking if she had been at the Crab Feed, and if she happened to be a geocacher because I saw her talking to the guy in the kilt...  
• Well, it turns out that not only is she a geocacher, but I have found several of her caches. She hid a few of the caches on Lake Natoma that I got from my kayak.  I told her Hope is probably even in some of the pictures on my logs for her caches.  She told me that she recognized my geocaching name too...

And, that's how I ended up going hiking today...she invited me to join her on a hike she was doing with other geocachers from the area.  The hike itself was pretty short, only a few miles, over a bridge and down the Western States Trail that ended at a waterfall. It was a good thing it was short as it started raining when we made it to our lunch spot, but it didn't ruin the day.  It was kind of fun to meet the other geocachers whose names I recognized and we found one cache along the trail.

The best part of all this is that Hope has a new buddy named Maggie who is a therapy dog , loves to hike, and goes geocaching - just like her.  They got along great today, even when we let them hike off leash and let them play in the water by the waterfall.

Hopefully, we can arrange some time to go caching/hiking together...and we'll be doing some therapy visits together too.  Very cool how things came together....

A picture of Maggie and Hope on the trail:

There were probably about 6-7 dogs on the hike today, this is Maggie, Hope and Pharoh (a shelter dog who's owners just adopted in October).

Hope at the waterfall:

Even though it was a short hike, it was nice to get out for a few hours before the rain really started coming down. I'm also happy that Hope and I have new friends, both human and dog! :-)