Scenic Sunday

On Sunday, I decided to take Vista on a hike.  I had no clue WHERE to take her, but Mrs. H had given me vague instructions on how to get to a pretty river at one point, and they involved the Highland Scenic Highway.  I'd never been, and it seemed a good place to start.  The Highway bisects the Monongahela National Forest, and is peppered with overlooks and clearly marked trailheads.

We stopped at all of the overlooks we passed, because why not?  This is from the first one.  I love the sky out here.  It's so unbelievably blue.  When I take a photo like this, I won't even touch it in Photoshop, for fear of spoiling that perfect blue.

We gave the Williams River Trail a try.  We went right first, until it got too overgrown, then backtracked and headed left.

The Williams River (no relation to me).  I've heard tell that the fishing is good.

This was Vista's first time off the leash on a trail, and she was great!  She'd run ahead a little ways, then turn around and come back as soon as I called or she realized she couldn't see me.

This is the face of a ridiculously happy dog.

After walking that trail for a little while it, too, got a little overgrown, so we headed back to the car.  One of Vista's many fears is that I will get in the car without her and drive away, and for some reason that fear kicked into overdrive after our hike.  Rather than waiting for me to open the back door like usual, she leaped in as soon as I opened the front passenger door, and gleefully got muddy pawprints all over the front of my car.  There was even mud on the gearshift.  Just another normal day with Vista's neuroses.

Covered in mud, we drove on until I saw a sign for Tea Creek.  It sounded interesting, and when I crossed the little one-lane bridge over it, I was so enchanted that we stopped.  It was shallow and filled with easy-to-navigate boulders, so we hopped on in.

We made a brief stop for photos and a bite to eat.

Vista was so funny on these rocks.  She'd hop from boulder to boulder, then splash happily into a deeper section of creek, then scramble out onto the banks and start the whole wild loop again!

Finally, now that we were wet AND muddy, we headed back to the house.

Stopping once more at an overlook, of course.  Sometimes I think about home, about the crowded suburban area I was born and raised in, and find it almost impossible to reconcile that place with this one.  It seems impossible that the two worlds could coexist, much less be located mere hours from one another!

But this is where I live now.  This astounding beauty is my backyard.  Or, at the very least, the backyard of the lovely green-thumbed woman who lives next door and lets me play around in her garden from time to time.