It’s become a tradition to take the Mush Puppies, as we say in Minnesota, “up north” in the spring and fall for a mushing vacation. Usually we scooter, although last spring we were fortunate enough to be skijoring at the end of April. I can’t in good conscience call this spring’s trip a mushing vacation, though, because it rained overnight nearly every night. This made the ground really too soft to scooter, and we only got one short run in.

The rest of the time, we went hiking. Once to twice a day, almost every day, we went for a hike which I am choosing to consider cross training considering all the up and down hills we did. Depending on how far out into the middle of nowhere and away from roads we went, sometimes cani-hiking…

…and sometimes off leash. This was the Magnetic Rock Trail, on the one day it was sunny most of the day.

This was the one day it was sunny all day long.

This is the Centennial Trail, which we completed although I hadn’t initially intended to. This day, like most days, it was overcast although it didn’t generally actually rain during the day.

As usual, the dogs thought posing was dumb.

Although all that hiking was great exercise for all of us, and resulted in a lot of power naps.

All in all it was a good time. We hiked miles of trails and viewed lots of beautiful views together. We did what we wanted when we wanted, and I watched a lot of movies, caught up on some podcasts, did quite a bit of knitting. All in all a restful, rejuvenating time together with my Mush Puppies and I’m going to make more of an effort this year to work more hiking in between scooter runs, because these dogs really are great hiking partners.