Reservoir Dogs, The Walter F Pratt Picnic Area - Part 1

It was a good day to be outdoors and I was caught up on my chores, so I took the dogs to the nearby Brasher State Forest for some playtime:

The access road took us through pine forests of great beauty:

And directly to the C.C. Dam and reservoir, where I let the dogs out to play. Growing up in Ohio, we had C.C.C. dams and the three Cs stood for Civilian Conservation Corps. I don't know if this New York version with only two Cs is of the same origin, but I suspect it is:

There was no one else anywhere except for one campsite with no people in evidence. So I let the dogs run and never yelled at them once, though perhaps that's more because they're beginning to learn about not running too far ahead and less because of my magnanimity:

We walked beneath the pines and along the shoreline of the reservoir:

The dogs never went into the water - not even Seamus. They were content to keep their feet dry:

But they sniffed everything thoroughly:

Jack continuously ran, chugging along like a little orange locomotive:

Clover explored the shoreline but didn't get wet:

Steeplebush was not only in bloom, but just about the prettiest bloom I've ever seen:

We veered away from the water's edge at one point and began heading toward a peninsula:

We walked down the peninsula, with water on three sides. Though the biting flies were out in force in some places, they never bothered us at all. But we had more yet to explore, and I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: