When you forecast the weather for a living the last thing you want to do is wake up on the weekend, look out the window and see something you didn’t forecast! Take this morning for example. My call for today was sunny. I woke up to cloudy. That’s not good.
Helaine and I planned to take Doppler up Sleeping Giant. I wasn’t showing my face with this kind of blown call!
Around noon I double checked my numbers then went on Facebook and Twitter to post:
My forecast was for sunny skies. Ugh! Not so. The Sun should be out by 2-3p based on what I see now. I don’t like being wrong. #hiding
Online friends started checking in. Western Connecticut got the sunshine first which then slowly crawled across the state.
By 2:00 PM the clouds had parted and we were ready to go.
On an afternoon like this Sleeping Giant Mountain State Park gets busy. We drove past the parking lot and into the picnic area. There were families and other groups of people walking toward the trails.
Doppler walked to our right. We were surprised to see she did little sniffing. She didn’t seem curious about the other dogs either… well, unless they were interested in her.
That’s how we ran into Benji. Benji is a Maltapoo–a Maltese/Poodle combination. There were some subtle differences, but he and Doppler surely share some lineage.
I’m glad I snapped these photos.
Doppler has four legs, but they’re short. She was taking two or three times the steps on twice the number of legs. Maybe she’ll make it to the tower at the top of the mountain later this summer, but not today.
We stopped at the bench a little over halfway to the top and rested for a moment before heading back down. Doppler’s pace quickened with gravity finally on her side!
As we walked the lower part of the trail I turned to Helaine and told her how good it is to live near The Giant. It’s tough to express how much I love that beautiful chunk of Connecticut.
Tonight I’m typing with a sleeping puppy next to me. Her paws are a lot dirtier than they were this morning.
