Today we took a short trip, really just an afternoon trip, primarily to spend some time outdoors with Sophie, my German Shepherd dog. Sophie is the most wonderful companion. Smart, well-behaved, curious. Everything you want a dog to be. She was, unbelievably, a rescue. She’s around two years old, perhaps two and a half and we really don’t know her story. But, when she came to us, she was perfectly trained although she had been passed from person to person all of her young life due to a divorce in her initial family.
We try to get Sophie out in the world fairly often. She has a lot of space at my house, but German Shepherds are smart, curious and easily bored. Kentucky has a wonderful system of state parks and we spend time at various parks to give Sophie some richness of experience. She also gets a hamburger and some ice cream!
Our adventure today was to Carter Caves State Park which is about 20 miles from my home. It’s in one of many of the cave areas in the state of Kentucky. Most of the underlying rock in Kentucky is limestone and over eons of time, caves have been carved into the limestone. In this state park, the caves are fairly small compared to other cave areas and have, for the most part, been closed due to a disease that is plaguing the bat population in the eastern United States. Even in the summer, there is no exploration of the caves allowed. When I was growing up nearby, the caves were all open for exploration.
There is still a lot to enjoy at this Kentucky State Park for avid outdoors people. Lots of hiking and backpacking, a nice campground for RV camping, and a beautiful lake for fishermen surrounded by heavy hardwood forest. There is a nice restaurant, good southern U.S. cooking and a lodge.
Sophie didn’t go there for any of that! She needed an outing and she loves to ride in the Jeep and go to new outdoorsy places. She had a blast today. Rock climbing, smelling lots of new things, getting her feet wet in the beautiful creek, sniffing at the entrances of the caves. We walked most of the afternoon until we were all ready to head back to the Jeep. Sophie (and I) will sleep well tonight.
The Write Scribe 