This weekend we went out hiking! The trail was great…the end had a bit of a surprise that makes me not want to frequent this trail…or call Parks and Rec…either way, it was fun until the end!
We did the Timberbrook Lake Trail in Farny State Park! It’s just south of Winnebago Scout Camp and the parking lot is at the entrance to the camp off of Timberbrook Road. The trail head is clearly marked for you to find the start of the trail! We started on Yellow, somehow ended up on White (I should have paid more attention to the exact route we took) and routed back to Yellow to finish off our hike. We doubled back in a few places and ended up doing about 3.25 miles, but I think the actual trail should have been around 2.8 miles.
We started off great! The trail was very well marked and clear, which of course made me happy! Brodie was in heaven walking over all the leaves and he did GREAT at avoiding the mud! (Which was all him! We didn’t tell him to avoid it, he just did!)
We got to do some training too! We tied two leashes together to create our own long line (I forgot to grab our actual one before we left!) to give Brodie some freedom to explore, smell, and practice his recall, all while we still had control of him in case we ran into other hikers or his caught sight of a squirrel! He did GREAT! Brodie gave us about 90% recall, almost 100% when we brought out his frisbee to help with the training! (We all know he LOVES his frisbee at this point-if you’ve been reading some of our other posts!)
Brodie and that frisbee makes my day-everyday! Plus look at that sit with attention…all thanks to-you know it-the frisbee! Go toy motivated dogs!
We loved how quiet the trail was when we went because we had a lot more freedom to work on his training and stress less about his leash reactivity. We also practiced staying on the trail and not following smells and scents that lead off the trail. Leave no trace and staying on the trail are both super important when hiking with dogs!
Eventually, we made our way down to the lake! Brodie was so excited to see water, but it’s winter (well technically it was still fall when we hiked), so there was no swimming/wading in the water, much to his dismay. He still loved posing next to it to show off how beautiful it looked! We tried to continue to follow the trail there, but the water level was a bit high to continue through one part…oh well.
So we back tracked a little and ended up picking up the white trail again…somehow. Again I should have paid more attention to where we were going, but the boys were leading so I didn’t have to pay THAT much attention.
One of my favorite parts of hiking with them is to watch them bond and hang together, while I move exponentially slower behind them.
We eventually made it back to the yellow trail heading back to the trail head and the car, when we saw what we thought was another hiker. Brodie, we have learned, is SUPER reactive to hats and the man was wearing a bright orange hunting hat. We warned him about the aggressive barking and that we would be walking quickly past him due to Brodie’s fear of hats…
That should have been it with that conversation right?! Wrong. He goes on to tell us that we should be in bright orange gear too. When we got closer we say he was carrying a hunting gun (don’t ask me the kind, I could not tell you) and he said that this was a hunting area…
That’s not even the craziest part! He continues to say that he could have or almost would have shot our dog because he’s brown and looks like a deer… Who knew a short/stocky Pitbull looked like a tall deer? Not me, but I was ready to get out of there as soon as humanly possible.
Luckily we were close to the trail head and then started doing research! Don’t worry, we WERE hiking on a hiking trail and that guy was hunting where he should NOT have been hunting! We called the Department of Fish and Wildlife and a few other places, plus our friends who work the scout camp to confirm that we were in the right place and he most certainly wasn’t! Thank goodness!
So even though there was an interesting ending, it was a GREAT hike! Nice, clear, well marked, and quiet!
What do you think? Does Brodie look like a deer to you?