I spent part of the weekend camping alongside a creek somewhere outside of the unincoperated town of Carson, Washington. As we crossed the Bridge of the Gods, either myself or my traveling companion remarked, "We've reached Twin Peaks country." Sure, the real Twin Peaks is upstate somewhere but something about the area screamed, "watch your step or you're going to find yourself bickering over rent control with the owner of the Black Lodge."

The weather was hit or miss and the billion or so people we were camping with rendered our site a mud pit by Saturday afternoon. Besides all that, we were able to engage in activities not limited to eating undercooked bratwursts, building a makeshift beer cooler in a creek, learning how to cook corn-on-the-cob over a campfire, walking on logs over a river, ducking BB pellets and watching this dog eat a live mouse.

Meet Moose. He and a mouse jumped into a bush. Only one of them returned. I'll spare you the details. Here he is actin' all like Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans. According to his owner, this is the least of Moose's gastrointestinal accomplishments. Apparently, there's nothing he can't ingest up to and including an entire squirrel.

On Saturday we all went on a hike along Falls Creek. I strongly recommend giving it a shot, if you're into this sort of thing. Trail # 152A is possibly one of the most majestic I've hiked around here, although it could use more out-of-sight spots for pee breaks. Some of us packed beer instead of water and this led to a substantial amount of "awkwardness" involving two middle-aged women and a full bladder.

Nothing my camera can capture does the trail justice.

This snail showed up around the time we decided to abandon camp on Sunday.

An early morning rain shower turned our campsite into what I'm pretty sure would qualify as a bog. Heading back to town seemed like the right thing to do when even Moose seemed more content to hide in a tent than give this French culinary delight a shot.

Labels: dogs, nature, the weather