Hot but beautiful weather this morning as we set out to explore some new trails at Rattle Snake Gutter. It’s a geologically gorgeous place with stunning rocks, steep ups and downs, and a magnificent, unique ravine. Almost to the top, and very soon after we stopped to take another “Hobbits in the Roots” photo we realized we hadn’t seen good dog Baxter for a while. As he’s recently had a bout of seizures and is now on phenobarbitol it was a source of real concern for all of us. We split up on a loop part of the trail but when we got back together no one had seen a trace of him. Great worry took over the fun of the day as we traced our steps back down, splitting up once in a while to cover all the possible trails he might have followed. After what seemed like forever, two hikers coming up asked if we might be missing a black and white dog as they’d seen one who seemed anxious and confused down at trail head. He’d made it down to where our cars were parked and it was such a relief to have him there in one piece. That’s our Baxter, 4th photo from the end. Then on to Atkins Farm where Lynn and John joined us for a birthday lunch and we all sang to John and ate the blueberry pie Tony had made with blueberries from his big stand of blueberry bushes here in Conway and with a celebratory Rattle Snake baked into the pie crust. Five of us later headed directly to the Conway Pond where we swam and had great fun for another hour and a half. What a relief that we found Baxter today and that he was, at least, “OK”. I hope your day has an equally good ending, Love, Penny 
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