Hiked around, mapping.

Pulled third board from spilldam on lake.

Hiked around, mapping.

Got 3 CDs from Amazon: DJ Nu-Mark - "Hands On", Curve - "Come Clean", and Los Lobos - "The Ride". The Los Lobos CD has a lot of guest musicians and is a little spotty, but still good. I bought the Curve CD because it was recommended by Amazon to customers who bought albums by Snake River Conspiracy. It's OK, but not great. Nu-Mark's album (he's one of the DJs for Jurassic 5) is a non-stop flow of pretty cool beats from all over the world, plus a few new songs with guest rappers. Great groove to the whole CD.

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Hiked all over the north end of of the Baumunk Lake Property. Picked some apples on my way back.

Made apple jelly from the apples i picked.

The dogs have taken to waiting on the porch for me to let them in. They'd rather be inside with me.

Drove from Shunk up to Rutland, VT and stayed at a hotel. Spent the evening alternately watching the Red Sox (lose) and the presidential debate.

Met with a real estate agent and looked at three houses in the area. All were about $100,000 and all were in horrible states of disrepair. Then i called about a house for rent in Wallingford and drove by it. Looked nice and had a fenced backyard for the dogs. Called about another place for rent then drove back to Shunk.

Hiked around Bill Cooney's place.

Mapped some more paths.

390 Miles

Hooked up the trailer, loaded up the dogs, and drove to Vermont. I looked at a rental house that was small and kinda crappy, but had lotsa fields for the dogs, then looked at the one in Wallingford, which i decided to rent. After that was settled, i drove over to Okemo, hiked around the Jackson Gore area with the dogs, then parked in the parking lot to spend the night, but Okemo security came by and told me i had to move over to the other base area, which i did.

335 Miles

Spent the day at the fall orientation session for Okemo Learning Center employees. The dogs spent the day tied up to the trailer in the parking lot. After all the training was over i decided to just head on back to Shunk, which i did.

Mapped some more paths.

I let the dogs out this morning and i heard them yipping and barking incessantly at something. I thought maybe geese. Then Curt drives up from the other house and tells me that my dogs have a deer trapped out in the lake. I go out and the poor thing is about 20 yards out with one dog on this bank and one on the other. I call them off and the deer continues on up the lake into the stumps on the upper end. It looks exhausted and is having trouble maneuvering through the muck and over the stumps and logs and debris. I corral the dogs, but pretty soon they take off again and i hear them barking their heads off. I walk up the path and find them once again in a standoff with the deer, who's about 20 feet offshore, standing still. I bring the dogs back and put 'em in the house. Teco is so wiped out from running through the water and muck that his whole back end is quivering and his tail just droops to the ground. After about probably over an hour of being inside, i let the dogs out, figuring that the deer will be long gone by now. But pretty soon, there go the dogs, yelping again. I trot back up the path to find that the deer hasn't moved. So i bring the dogs home, get out a kayak and paddle up to the deer. I get to within about 6 feet of him (3-point buck) and he looks nervous and scared and tired, but doesn't move. Finally i prod him with the paddle and he bounds off toward shore, which is when i see that his front leg is broken in half and he's bleeding around his anus. Ew. So i paddle back, go get Curt, and we drive up to the top end of the lake, go find the deer, track him for a couple hundred feet, and curt shoots him. Got him in the neck, which put him down, then he shot him in the head. We saw that he was cut up in a few other places, so we figured that he was probably hit by a car and saught shelter in the water, then the dogs found him. We loaded him in the back of the truck and dumped him in the woods for a bear to feast on. Weird morning.

4th (and last) board pulled from spilldam.

Picked up a U-Haul rental trailer and loaded it up with a bunch of my stuff.

Hauled the U-Haul trailer with the BLP pickup truck (with a full load of furniture in the bed) up to Wallingford.

Unloaded the trailer, returned it, then drove back to the lake.

Hiked around the lake one more time with the dogs. Cleaned up the lake house after having lived there for 5 months!