Today we finally hiked to the top of Beacon Rock. It is a pretty short hike, but with quite a spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge. The summit is the top of the second largest solid rock formation in the world (or so everyone around here tells us). Not only that, but the rock is located practically in the Columbia river. Pretty impressive. When we left home it was pretty warm, but as we hit the gorge the wind kicked in big time. Thankfully the walk from the car to the trailhead was the worst of it, otherwise we might have been blown off at the top. The hike is almost entirely made up of very short switchbacks with metal hand rails on the cliff side for protection. While most of the switchbacks have rock for footing, a few are actually wood pannel forming mini bridges. Ada was with us and was loving the hike up until we would hit a wood bridge that didn't have anything but rails on both sides... apparently those rails weren't too comforting to her. We were able to coax her over the scary ones on the way up, but on the way down there was one that she would have nothing to do with. Jared ended up carrying her over that one and she was trembling by the other side. She has been a little timid a few times, but this was a whole new level of fear. We felt horrible! Thankfully within a few minutes she was wagging her tail and tugging us along again. Whew.
Good thing I secured my toupee so well!
Lately we have been taking Ada to a dog park nearby. It is a great off-leash park with a couple big hills. She absolutely loves to run up and down the hills with whatever dogs are there. Last time we went we met another Ridgeback named Rana. Rana makes Ada look like a puppy! She is a massive dog. Anyway, after the hike we were feeling guilty for having traumatized Ada, so we wanted to take her to the dog park... but it was getting late. We knew of another dog park that was on the way home from the hike, so we drove around and ended up finding it with a little bit of time before dark. It is not as nice as the other park (Ada was missing the big hills), but we did run into Rana and her owners. It was fun to watch the two ridgebacks play together. They seemed to recognize each other right away and kept going back to playing just the two of them rather than with the other dogs. Rana's owners told us about a monthly gathering of ridgebacks at a dog park in Portland. We are excited to check it out, but don't want to become too obsessive. ;-)
