Adventuring

 Dad stopped by for a few minutes this morning. While he was here, we hiked out through the snow to take a look at a couple trees - we may try to use trees from my property when I build a barn. 

There are lots of deer tracks everywhere, but a little ways from the house, we saw some different tracks. We're no experts, but after studying them a bit, we decided that a dog or a coyote had crossed the trail there. 

We carried on and looked at the trees. Then Dad left and I got lunch. There's a lost dog in the area, and it occurred to me that there was a tiny chance that the tracks belonged to that dog. Feeling adventurous, I decided to follow the tracks and see if there were any further clues.

The trail led me through the deep woods, in 4-6 inches of crunchy snow, across a creek (I carefully balanced on a log) and well off my property. (I haven't noticed any "no trespassing" signs, and I don't believe that lot is occupied, so I'm pretty sure it's okay to hike there.) 

Here's approximately what my journey looked like, starting at the bottom. I gave up the search where the blue dot is on the left, just before I would have had to cross the road.

I started toward home...or so I thought. Lol, I pulled up the map after a few minutes and discovered I'd been going too far east and not enough south. That did lead me to an intriguing discovery, though - I found a cleared trail, a very sketchy bridge, and a neat little pond. Here's the trail and pond: 

And the bridge. I tested it carefully with each step - it's hard to see in the photo, but the dropoff on the right was probably 5 feet, and a lot of boards were missing. I had no desire to fall through a rotting board into the creek!

I never did figure out whether the tracks were from a dog or a coyote, but it was a fun excursion! 

Here's a neat branch I saw:

And a neat mushroom:

And then the scene I saw when I returned home:

Happy Monday!!!