We walked the entire nature trail & boardwalk - and then kept right on walking through Vilas Park. The parks in Madison are so wonderful. It's one of my favorite parts of Madison - the Parks Department. So wonderful!
Once we were on the boardwalk portion of the walk - we found this guy:
The turtle was trying to cross the boardwalk - and Dexter was SO excited!!! He wanted to sniff and play with the little guy in the worst way. Eventually, Chris had to pick Dex up and walk him past the turtle so we could continue our walk. On the way back, Dex was able to be pulled past the turtle... but not without a lot of whining and pulling and obvious desire to play with the turtle.
Once we finished out the nature trail and boardwalk portion of our walk, we continued along the bike path around Vilas Park. It was packed! It made me even more excited for Spring and Summer - time for cookouts and picnics and more hikes and bike rides and everything else amazing about spring and summer in Wisconsin. We saw lots of cute ducks and geese and even saw a few giraffes at the zoo - you can see the zoo from the park - which is awesome. :)
I'd say this was about halfway through our walk. Dex was considerably more relaxed (read: TIRED) by this point - he was so relaxed he didn't get excited when two boys came over to pet him! Needless to say - he certainly had a great time on the walk.
Once we'd looped around Vilas Park, we decided to reverse our walk along the nature trail & boardwalk - but not before stopping for some self-portrait, family photos:
The first was a true "self-portrait" style - we held out the camera and snapped, the second was my first dabbling with the timer feature on my camera. I know it seems like a simple feature - but I'd never used it before and was happy to learn - especially since it makes it so much easier to nab photos like this one.
On our way back down the boardwalk, we found the turtle again. Like I said before - Dexter was just as excited to see it and REALLY wanted to play with it - but he was a bit more tired, making it slightly easier to get him past the little shelled creature without any "incidents" of puppy noses pinched in turtle jaws. (I don't *think* it was a snapping turtle - but we were still wary of letting him get too close.)
On the way back, we were able to climb much closer to the water's edge and the "fishing spot." (On the way out there was a group of teens occupying the small bench and area where you can get an awesome full view of the lake.) AND, Dexter almost went in the water on his own. Almost.
Here's the happy boy perched on the downed tree that you have to walk across to get to the bench:
This is probably my favorite photo from the entire day -- he just looks so happy. :)
While things won't be *quite* so nice for a few more weeks (yesterday the high was 81 - which is downright HOT for April), it should stay nice enough for us to get more hikes in and hopefully some bike rides and more running as well.
Now that I've blogged about our awesome hike - I should apologize for being such a lazy blogger... it's been weeks since I last blogged - and while I feed myself the excuse that I've been "busy" - it's really just been laziness. For that I apologize. Here are a few updates on a few things:
1 - working out is a two steps forward - one step back process. It seems that we'll make it to the gym twice in one week - then the next two weeks we don't make it at all. Either we have things scheduled that conflict with our class, or I don't feel well. I've been fighting off a fairly unflattering and uncofortable stomach bug for the past few weeks - which makes working out the last thing I want to do at the end of a day of stomach cramps and work. Ugh!
2 - work's still quite busy. Politically, things are not much calmer in Wisconsin. (That might be the understatement of the week.) On top of the continuing protests and arguments surrounding collective bargaining, the state budget, cuts and taxes - the collective bargainig bill is now going through the court system (at several levels, as part of several lawsuits) - AND we have an extremely contentious Supreme Court Justice race heading for a recount. The first unofficial vote totals had the challenger winning by a mere 200 votes. Then, unexpectedly, the county clerk for the home county of the incumbent announced late last week that she inadvertently left an entire city (14,500 votes) out of her total - giving the incumbent a 7,500 vote lead. There are now calls for a federal investigation and recounts in that county and possibly the state. It seems every day brings a new political wrinkle into our lives here in Wisconsin lately.
3 - crafting. The original point of this blog... I've been slacking. I haven't done any crafting since that baby blanket MONTHS ago. :( Part of it is that I do feel quite busy - and when the weather is nice I'm doing my best to get out and enjoy it. Hopefully things will eventually slow down and I'll get to some of those crafts cluttering up my "I've got to try this" list! I should also start posting some of my cooking adventures -- in fact a friend suggested I start doing a food blog since I do cook so often. We'll see if that happens... ;)
And with that - it's dinner time. I'd better hit the kitchen - taco burgers don't cook themselves, ya know!
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