The Baltimore/DC area has been in a beeyootiful weather bubble for the past week - temps rising into the 70s and literally not a cloud in sight. Sunday am I had custody of Lauren's dog Finn, so Carl and I decided to do a dog-friendly hike - the trail system in the hills above the Patapsco area north of Ellicott City where the Daniels Dam once fed a bustling mill community but is now nearly deserted - just a church and a wood chip/mulch processing plant left.
We only did about 3.5 miles, trying out a few new trails to see if there were more loops that could be created. This area has a mix of trails that are used by mountain bike riders, hikers and horseback riders - none are blazed and more appear all the time. Finn the Wonder Dog probably did closer to 20 miles - he couldn't quite understand why all we did was walk in one direction at a time and why we never stopped to roll around in dead stuff...
When Carl and I survey new trail directions we tend to look at trails heading steeply down hill with "if we go all the way down there and it dead ends, we will have to slog all the way back up." Finn looks at the same potential route and seems to think "Cool - I can run all the way downhill to the river, and then get to run all the way back up!!" This kind of thinking is why dogs haven't moved very far up the food chain. Though, you rarely see a dog following a human with a plastic bag to pick up the undigested parts of the human's breakfast...
Lots of nice ups and downs in this one, nice views of the river. It can also be extended to go all the way over to Patapsco State Park with a loop back on the railroad tracks but not quite as dog-friendly.
Comments