Brusy Creek State Park: A day of hiking

Again today Brian and I were trying to get out of painting, so we decided to take Mattie and Dawson for a hike At Brushy Creek State Park, which is only about 30 minutes from our house. We walked for about 4 hours around the lake...but didn't get too far. The lake is about 700 acres, so we didn't make much of a dent in the 45 miles of trail. The lake is pretty and the trails are well groomed, as you can see in the photos below.
There were lots of interesting dead trees around like this one, so we assumed that the lake wasn't always as big as it is today. This tree was in several feet of water, with fishing boats navigating around it. We had a lot of fun...and managed to wear the dogs out. There's a large campground that allows horses in the area, so we had to keep the pups on leashes. I don't think that either dog has seen a horse up close before, so they were a little scared when we came upon several on the trail. Mattie was great...Dawson did some barking.
Here's Brian singing to the fields, happy to be out in the sunshine. Life is good!
And me in front of a soybean field we walked by, along with some soybeans up close. Very interesting. I always wondered what soybeans looked like.It was very hot, but luckily we found some excellent swimming spots for the dogs, so they didn't overheat like on our last walk. In hindsight we should have brought sunscreen- I managed to acquire a pretty bad burn. Brian seemed to be unaffected by the sun, probably because he spends so much time outside mowing the lawn.


Here's Dawson waiting for Mattie to get back from retrieving a stick. He lets her do most of the work and then tries to steal the credit. Eventually Mattie got her revenge..as you can see in the video below. Nice work, Mattie.

A very fun afternoon!