Chapter 1, Azure Mountain Revisited

My sister, my niece and one Papillon arrived Sunday night after a twelve hour drive from Columbus and spent the night crammed into my little farm apartment with me and my six dogs. Very early the next morning (who could sleep?), we loaded the five younger dogs into the car and set off for Blue Mountain Road to hike up Azure Mountain. Our first stop along the trail was this old cabin site:

My young niece took the lead as we traveled the all too brief level beginning of the trail. Her little Papillon stayed with her and my dogs stayed mostly with me, checking now and then to see why I was so darn slow:

But all too soon the trail turned uphill:

My sister stopped to give sweet Fergus a pat on the head, making him for one moment the happiest dog in the world:

The trail was unrelentingly steep, albeit beautiful:

And we stopped frequently for a brief rest. That's the new dog, Madeline, at my niece's feet:

We kept climbing uphill. Seamus, as you can see, needed a rest:

Up, up, up, up and then up some more:

And continuously up. Even the young ones in our group (both canine and human) needed a rest now and then:

My sister said she'd repeatedly thought the summit must be just ahead, but I warned her against that sort of thinking as I'd been disappointed so very many times on various mountains:

However, we did finally arrive at the summit, with the fire tower just ahead. I love this picture, with all five dogs in the foreground watching us huffing and puffing up the hill:

The last time I'd climbed up here, I'd put the dogs on leashes because - well, you can see why. But this time we felt more confident and left them off leash. The view was, quite literally, breathtaking. But there was lots of summit to explore in addition to the fire tower. I'll post more tomorrow: