Wow, what a great weekend we had! Started off pulling up to the kiosk Friday morning around 9am to meet Olddog and Skunkape. I was an hour early because I left to try and beat the Tampa morning rush hour traffic. I was just hanging out for about 15 minutes, when a forest ranger pulled up to ask me if the puppy down the road was mine. I told him no and we chit chatted for a few minutes. He left and shortly after, I see the puppy come trotting down the road. It comes up to my truck, but I didn't open the door, in case he may be wild or something. He seemed very gentle and tired. I watched him leave to head on down the road. He reminded me of my dog and I don't know why, but I decided to get out and call him back. I would find out later, I was glad I did! The rest of the gang showed up, as well as Samsara. We told him about the puppy and he agreed to take him to his house. After taking care of the puppy for a while, the animal control showed up at his house. While giving up the puppy , he decided to ask the guy if they had taken in a dog matching the description of Scooby, his dog. You see, Dave's dog, a companion of over 13 years had wandered off a few days prior. As you can imagine, Dave has been very upset over it. Well, as fate would have it, the animal control officer just happened to have a photo of a dog that was just taken in, that matched the description. It was in fact Scooby!! We got the phone call from Dave as we reached the Isabelle creek campsite. The celebration of Grinder's Birthday Hang had officially begun!! Olddog, Skunkape and myself had just reached the site, after hiking in nearly 7 miles from the south end. Several regulars had backed out of this hang for various reasons and we wondered how many we might have show up. Not even Grinder, who usually beats everyone there, had made it. He finally came strolling in late in the day. We had our dinner and spent the evening chatting and catching up. After retiring to the hammocks, I had an unusually quiet night in the woods. Heard a couple owls and what sounded like a cow early in the morning and that was all. Saturday morning, we had our breakfast and loaded up to head to our next site, Lake side camp. In route to the site, we decided to take an unknown trail, which wound up cutting probably 1 1/2 miles off our trip. We reached the Lakeside camp, to find lilricky, rictorFla, Gone Native and his son Gameboy, already in camp. We greeted each other and later craigc showed up to round out the crew. Saturday night was spent gathered around the fire and waiting for the rain that was expected. We continued to hang out through a light shower, until it started to come down a little harder. We all retired to the hammocks to spend a night listening to the rain on tarps. it continued to rain through the whole night and through packing up this morning. It finally let up for the hike out, which was welcomed. We hit the vehicles and exchanged our goodbyes, until the next one. Once again, had a great time, exchanging ideas and laughing with a bunch of wonderful people! I didn't take many pics this time, but will post them up later. Happy Birthday Grinder!!!
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