Curious Canine Contentment

Koda likes to run free as much as any dog, but his level of excitement is contagious when the leash comes out.

In fact, a run off the leash in the park "does not count" in his book.

The day is not complete without at least one or two good leashed walks.

Here, he powers up a steep hill, through a sun flare; an old sled dog pulling a slow biped musher behind him.

Perhaps the last of the fine days. Late November is about as deep into the year as you can hope for pearls of sunlight like this. (It's supposed to hit 60 tomorrow, BTW on Dec 3.).

looking downhill on Shell St.

On a bike, this is a short steep Cat 5. It feels like the Col du Tourmalet.

Walking it is a lot easier.

As he rounds the corner, the penguin retriever is illuminated by the western sky.

Shell St. About as steep, but not as long of a climb.

The old glacial moraine, here, has a lot of old fissures and valleys, and this a view down to  one formed at the end of an ice age past, when things were warming up.

Strange to think this was once a frozen wilderness, at one time.

"The Laurentide ice sheet advanced and retreated over a period of 60,000 years. The last advance reached maximum 22,000 years ago, extending from southeastern Alberta across what are now the Great Lakes to the east coast. 

Two lobes surged down the Connecticut and Hudson river valleys, sculpting the land and depositing the moraines and outwash that would become Long Island. 

Sea water was locked up in ice, lowering the sea level by 350 feet compared to today; from Cape Cod southward, the coastal plain jutted out 50 to 100 miles further than the present-day shoreline, almost to the edge of the continental shelf."

Mind you, in about a month or two, those icy days might not seem so long ago.