A Winter Rest Stop At Frontier Town

Well, here it was another Sunday morning and we were headed up to the farm. I'd moved from the apartment into the farm house on our last trip, and this trip - well, I had a lot to do. But first we had to get there. I stopped, as usual, at Frontier Town at Exit 29 to give the dogs a rest stop. But this time there was a layer of slick ice all over everything and a layer of crusty snow atop that. Seamus took a spill on the ice within seconds, but quickly got up and continued on his way. Wally walked over to pee on the car's tire while Clover careened off at racetrack speed:

The sun was out, but still it was chilly and slippery. The Schroon River was just the other side of those Birch trees, but there was no beach or convenient access at this point. Clover stopped only momentarily while I snapped this photo:

Both Madeline and Clover raced toward the river and I worried briefly that they might get into something dangerous. But they were merely exploring and enjoying a good run:

We were near the performance stage where, I supposed, Frontier Town used to have Country Western singers perform. Madeline trotted across our own tire tracks as we explored the area:

We walked behind the performance stage/band shell and Fergus gave the old electrical equipment a thorough sniffing:

Of course I had to watch the two oldsters. Wally is blind and Winky is deaf, and both are prone to wandering minds. So I kept waving my arms for Winky and calling loudly for Wally. And yes, that's the Schroon River just behind the band shell:

A better look at the river. There were steep banks here, though, and we kept safely away from it:

I caught Clover running like a Greyhound across the snow. She does this all the time but, as you can imagine, it's difficult to capture it in a photo:

We circled the band shell and headed back toward the car. Madeline seemed to know just where we were going and headed there by way of the most direct route:

I turned around and saw Winky heading off in the wrong direction. I couldn't call him back because he was deaf so I began to trot off to catch up to him. That got the other dogs running that way also and totally confused old Wally. He didn't know which way to go:

But I managed to bring Winky back to the group and we once again began passing by the band shell on our way back to the car:

One last shot of big eared Clover as I loaded the other dogs back into the car. With her high energy and adventurous spirit, she often resists getting back into the car until the last moment. When all the dogs were loaded into the car, I began retracing our tire tracks through the snow and ice to get back onto the highway and continue our trip to the farm: