Taterland

The sun was out, the weather was warm, I just couldn't pass up this day to go geocaching. I only gave myself a few hours after finishing up puppy class with Zuleika as I really needed to get home to get some household chores done.

I headed out to an area called "Taterland" named by geocachers for its famous "taters", as in "potatoes", as in the piles and piles of cobble rocks (which kinda look like potatoes) left over from the gold mining days. I found six geocaches and hiked 3.7 miles. This area is full of geocaches, this was my 3rd visit here and I still have probably 10-15 more geocaches to find.

Zucchini and I took a little diversion and climbed up what I called the "Mother of all Taters", a HUGE hill of taters. This is her at the bottom of the hill that we climbed up.

I remember seeing this huge mound while kayaking at Lake Natoma, so it was cool to actually be on the hill looking down on the bike trail and the lake below from a different perspective. After finding a cache nearby, I saw a trail leading up the hill, so Zucchini and I climbed to the top to enjoy the view.

Little did I know the trip down would be a little more tricky. Had we taken the same route down that we took up, it would have been fine. But I saw a shorter trail down and it didn't look THAT steep. Well, it wasn't steep, but it was unstable. Who would have thought that I could practice my CCI command "wait" with Zucchini. I went first and had to be very careful as rocks were so unstable and in some areas just crumbled underneath my feet. I ended up taking Zucchini off leash, told her "wait", then I went down the hill a little further, once I got my footing, I called her to me...it was funny to watch her come down as she mostly slid down rather than taking steps. As she got close to me, I gave her another "wait" command, then I went (ie, slid) down a little further, and called her to me again. What a great geo-dog she is! It probably took us 5-10 minutes or so to get down but I just wanted to be extra careful as I didn't want to fall or break my ankle and if I was holding her leash, I didn't want to drag her down with me if I ended up slipping and sliding all the way down. What a pair we were!

Here's a picture of Zucchini after we made it down the hill of taters safe and sound! The trail we came down is visible behind her, not the one to the left, but the vertical trail a little left of center...



This area is certainly tough on the ankles!