Annie at the Elk Park

The grandson and I took Annie to the cool local park on the Little Spokane River today. It's a sweet little place, run by community volunteers, and has rills for kids to tube, a dammed-up shallow swimming area, a ball field and a simple grandstand. Annie charged everywhere (except into the water) and found some stinky things to roll in.

At the end of the park, a fence with a no-trespassing sign runs across the water and up the banks. It's a fair-sized little river and you'd think the state would have made it a public waterway, but no. There's a seven-mile stretch of the Little Spokane near the city that's been made into a nature preserve, but the rest is all privately owned. I guess if I owned a bit of it I wouldn't mind so much. Maybe. I'd let folks paddle through, though.

In other news, the sheep escaped and spent a whole 100-degree day rampaging around the hillsides. I tramped up and down in the heat calling, "Mmmeeeaaaaaahh," for a thousand years. No answer. The kids, bless their hearts, came out and helped scour the neighborhood. We did get to meet many nice folks up and down this road and the next, including a fellow who taught third grade in my schoolhouse in the 1970s. And his neighbor caught them in her barn, put them on leashes and sent another neighbor on a lawn tractor to let us know. It was awesome. K. got to wrestle a sheep into and out of the station wagon, and Richard took a butt to the stomach. With sheep back in pasture (fencing fixed), we celebrated my 55th birthday with smoked salmon and other goodies.