Somehow Griffin and I ended up on an adventure with a friend. We had a departure date and we had an end date – and the parts in the middle just sort of happened.
First we took the dogs to Washington DC. I’d been here before – 12+ years ago on a school trip – it’s unbelievable how much I’ve done since then. Occasionally I’d see some place and vaguely remember being there with the group. And now I was there again, with my dog and an unchoreographed trip.
We stayed in an apartment right in DC and managed to park the van nearby. Megan had already taught Griffin about apartments- the hallways, the elevators, the suspense of waiting to open the doors. He looked like a tourist – he really was looking at everything we walked past (as he was on the lookout for squirrels). We took a long walk around some of the monuments.
Griffin – Central Park, NYC
On another day we went and walked the dogs in Central Park. We did some google searching and didn’t find very much about how to get into the city or handle parking when we wanted to do visiting with the dogs. We took our chances and got really lucky with the parking – an end spot. It was a very cold and windy day. Many people were out exercising or dog walking, we saw a lot of golden retrievers! Our dogs loved that walk – water to see, ducks, pigeons, and squirrels!
On other days we took hikes in Maryland and New Jersey. At the start of the trip I had two things I did not want to do – I wanted to avoid places with bears and with steep rocky cliff. Somehow that ended up being our last hike, when we got to the park there was a sign posted warning about bears in the area. And just like we read on the tripadvisor.com reviews, there was “scrambling over boulders.” Park employees weren’t able to answer questions, but a helpful hiker told us where to go and we ended up on top of a hill (mountain?) with a great view of New York City. We were so high up and we had the place to ourselves. It was a great way to end that part of the trip. I wish we had more time to explore other areas of that park.
Bear sighting sign. I’m scared of bears.
And last night, I was on the other side of the city watching Griffin’s breeder teach an agility class with some of his cousins were participating. We talked for a while after class, it was so good to see her and to let her see Griffin. Most of his family lives out in that part of the country, very few of us are in the Midwest, so she has only met him once before as an adult dog and I hadn’t met those cousins.
It’s hard to believe that was only 24 hours ago and now we’re back home in snowy Ohio. We’re done with our big trips for this year and starting to think about what we would like to do in the next year.
Griffin and Epic – NYC skyline above Griffin – it didn’t photograph well, but it was impressive.