Mis-Adventures of Nate & Jenny: Saturday in the Woods

I wish I had lots of adventures to tell you about but sadly, I don't. I hurt my other hip during the triathlon and haven't been doing a whole lot of anything. I tried to run on Friday, got about 1/8th of a mile, maybe less and had to stop because of the pain. Lovely.... Thankfully, it feels 100 times better today and I think I can do a couple weeks of exercises and I'll be doing ok. So, I've been enjoying the time slowing down a lot, hanging out with the dogs, doing some yard work... basically, driving Nate crazy! :)

I typically take the dogs to a state park in South Berwick, ME called Vaughn Woods. It is all of 5 minutes from my house in a car. It is definitely on my list of the top 10 reasons I love living in Rollinsford, NH. It's quiet, it's wooded, it's empty, and it's beautiful. I took the dogs there on Saturday morning because it was the third day of raining and my dogs don't understand that rain causes one to get wet and that most humans don't like to be wet so they'd rather not spend 2 hours outside in the rain. And I have two of those really hyper kind of dogs and since I haven't been exercising a lot for 2 weeks, either have they. I decided that Vaughn Woods would be the best place because there is enough tree cover that even it was downpouring, I wasn't going to be sopping wet. Plus the dogs can run free and Scout can cover about 800 miles in the hour that it takes to do the loop. And if you think that I'm exaggerating about Scout, I dare you to go to the woods with us some time. He just runs and runs and runs and keeps on running and the only speed he has is fast. He's the endurance athlete of the two wonder pups.

The woods were looking really pretty on Saturday. The leaves are beginning to change and maybe because of the rain and fog, the colors just seemed to stand out a lot. Here are some pics of the trails from my iPhone.

Once you get through, the main part of the trail, it opens up to the river. I'm not sure if it's the Salmon Falls or the Piscatiqua (sp??) at this point, but it's always been one of my favorite parts about Vaughn Woods. I think the first time I walked the trails, I actually sat on the bench and enjoyed the river. It's just super peaceful.

It was a particular warm morning and I had no place to go (the house was asleep and sometimes I'm not sure if I'm allowed back in until at least 9...), and the dogs kept jumping in the river, so I threw a few sticks for them and they enjoyed their swimming time:

Oakley isn't quite sure whether or not she likes to swim. She lets scout do the work and then once he gets close enough, she swims out and steals the stick from him. She's a bit of a brat! :) I don't claim ownership of that characteristic...

One of my old co-workers thinks Scout looks like a devil-dog because of his crazy eyes, so I really wanted to get a picture of him looking dopey out of the water. I don't think he looks like his normal devil-dog self, but he doesn't look that dopey either.