Monday Fun Day: Coastal Hiking

Sadie and I recently drove out to the Coastal Range here in Oregon for a nice day hike for our Monday Fun Day adventure.  It was breaking 80 degrees in Portland and man, we just had to escape the heat!  (yes, I'm being sarcastic)

We decided to tackle Saddle Mountain, the highest peak en route to the Coast from Portland.  One review of the trail mentioned hurricane fencing used as trail maintenance in the latter half of the trail, which may not be good for dog paws, but I decided to risk it anyway.

 

Sadie approved and off we went!  The trail was a little more difficult than I had thought, or rather first hike of the season, I'm a little more out of shape than I realized.  But Sadie was very patient with my frequent stops to catch our breath and have a sip of water.


As we got up to the fencing as trail portion, out of shape Mom was huffing & puffing and decided to use Sadie's gentle paws as a reason to be OK with only doing half the hike Sadie decided she had better things to do.

The Summit we never reached...

So back down the mountain we headed and spent the rest of our afternoon at Cannon Beach.  And guess what?  No Sadie Water Crazies!  At all.  She didn't start whining once she smelled the ocean air.  She didn't pull when we parked the car and walked towards the beach.  Hell, she even walked excitedly but relatively calmly (for her) down the beach until we got to a less populated section where she could run.

And run she did!

Seeing her not get so crazy around the waves was totally worth a little bit o' shame regarding the unfinished hike.  I'm glad we took the time to reward her with a beach visit; would've been a shame to be just a few minutes away and not get to see her zoomies in the waves. 

Happy Memorial Day! May it be filled with sunshine, waves, BBQ and a wee bit of zoomies.