fall

Cooler temperatures have arrived and the kids are changing their minds about what they're going to be for Halloween almost daily.  That means it's time to go to Stewart Farms and get pumpkins.  

  Blue makes his choice

 Violet carries the loot

 The kids have grown a bit since last year

 Our favorite animal this year was the cow.  We all got to pet him and Violet got several good licks to the face and arm.

 Violet and G took the wagon ride and Blue and I did the mini corn maze.  We took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere inside the big maze.

 And after our pumpkins were chosen and the photos were made, we said goodbye to the farm until strawberry season.

Monday was the first day of Fall Break and it was particularly exciting for me.  I loaded up all the new sculptures I created over the summer and delivered them to the powder coating place and picked out their colors.  I'm really looking forward to getting those back and sharing them with people.

Tuesday I put Zeke in the truck and drove up to Jones Gap State Park for a hike.  

 A coupe of years ago Blue and I tried out the Rainbow Falls trail on a whim.  The hike is about 2 1/2 miles and it ascends 1000 feet over that distance.  We climbed and climbed and the very young Blue complained and complained.  When he could go no more we turned around and started back.  He was young but he was too heavy to carry back down on my shoulders.  Last Tuesday I realized that where we turned around, we were about 10 mins from the end of the trail and this beautiful waterfall.

 Everything is so vertical here pictures just cant show it to you.  You have to be in the space and tilt your head all the way back and hear the rushing water and feel the mist on your skin.

 Zeke helped pull me up the entire trail and he would have tried to scale the sheer rock face if I had told him to.  

 We climbed up close to see how the water fell out from the rock face.

 We shared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at the falls and he drank from the pools while I drank from the water bottle.

 And after a short rest, we started back down the hill.

 Everything was beautiful.

 Zeke did great though he did get off to a shaky start.  Like me, he's not the biggest fan of people.  There were a couple of groups of school kids taking in some nature walks.  As we approached the first loud and energetic group in order to pass them on the trail, Zeke freaked out and decided he'd rather go back to the truck.  He slipped his collar over his head and galloped back down the trail.  After a few yards he left the trail and found a nice bed of poison ivy to nestle down in.  We got hitched back up and then headed over to the river to rinse all the potential itchy stuff off our legs.  Then we headed back to the trail and successfully passed the noisy kids and continued on our great hike.

He did great the rest of the day and since I didn't get poison ivy, I decided to forgive him.