[36] Lake Clementine Trail

What's that then?What's what?That...thing. That barky looking thing in Julie's lap?Oh, that thing. That's a dog silly.I know it's a dog. What's it doing in a MamaPapaLolaOllie picture?Funny you should ask.The other day–literally, just last week–I'm sitting in the den, working, or maybe checking Facebook and Julie shows me this picture of the cutest darned dog you ever did see. Apparently, one of Julie's co-workers has been showing her pictures of this dog that was just hanging out at a pet rescue, waiting to be adopted [1]. Now, ever since Karma passed away back in 2008, we've had our hands plenty full with Lola and Oliver and the thought of taking on another responsibility was madness. But, we always knew, someday, we'd want another dog. So when Julie showed me this picture, she opened the door to the idea a bit and I proceeded to kick it down.Within minutes, I called the kids in to look at the picture to get them to pile on Mama and that evening I accidentally e-mailed Happy Tails asking if we could meet the little darling. That was Thursday night and by Tuesday, Daisy [Lee Gatson Bates] came to be a part of our family [2]. I'm not going to change the name of our blog from MamaPapaLolaOllie, but we are now, officially, MamaPapaLolaOllieDaisy.But, where was I? Oh, that's right, the Lake Clementine trail. After a summer of camping and hiking and then school and soccer, we haven't had much of a chance to hike. Now that winter's here though, we're back at it. The cool weather and lush, green landscapes make hiking just as beautiful this time of year. And, of course, we want Daisy to be our hiking buddy. This time we hit up a short-ish trail (~4.5 miles) in Auburn along the North Fork of the American River. Unfortunately, the last quarter-mile that actually leads to the dam is "no dogs allowed" so we had to stop and turn around. There's definitely some downsides to dogs. The second downside was at lunch. Part of the reason we chose this hike was its proximity to the Auburn Ale House, which we planned to stop at for lunch because Yelp! told me they had a patio that allowed dogs. Nope. (At least not in the winter, because they definitely have a patio.)As usual, the pics may be more interesting than the story so without further ado:

 *Julie's co-worker has since been dubbed Daisy's #fairydogmother. How cute is that?**Daisy was the name she came with and it seemed to fit but when a dear historian friend asked "what kind of name is that for a historian's dog?!" she quickly, retroactively, solved the problem for me and discovered Daisy Lee Gatson Bates. Perfect!