Another blurb of Leroy and me on a hike along the Rascal Bike Path here in Merced, a city of a bit more than 80,000 about an hour north of Fresno on the 99, heatedly-blistering in California’s Central Valley.
This morning, however, our walk was really nice — we’d started early, missed the up-driving temperatures that were torching lightly on our ass all the way home, returned just in the nick, though, before the air got heavy.
Right now, a late-afternoon Monday, it’s reportedly 101-degrees outside.

We walk every day, but I only post now-and-again (last one here). And once again, a disclaimer on the date/time stamp in the pictures — it’s not 2017. What a horror, huh?

Leroy…

On the scent this morning, Leroy trots along the Rascal west of Rahilly Park. Basset hound/greyhound mix, Leroy carries a massive desire to smell everything (and eat anything), but does allow some trotting on occasion until the next peculiar odor/or whatever attracts him to stop-and-investigate — and the stops can be abrupt, surprisingly quick.  I’ve been snatched around more than once. Moving/maneuvering Leroy is akin to moving/maneuvering a stump.

A number of people on the Rascal this morning, bikers, other dog walkers, joggers, even a group of running teenagers, appeared some sort of girls track-and-field team. Most kept their distance, and I always worked Leroy around all of them. I don’t wear a mask so I make sure there’s plenty of room between us. Masks are mandatory if I venture out shopping, but maybe in the out-of-doors and along the Rascal there’s breathing space. I try to make it so.
The girl runners, though, were clumped together, nowhere that minimum of six feet.
Leroy and I steered clear.

Urban pastoral…

Along the creek just short of Monte Vista Court.

And further east…

Shade with a biker approaching, a quiet stretch west of Rahilly Park. Leroy and I turned around not too far from that scene, in a small glade of trees near the entrance/exit to El Portal Drive.

Earlier this morning, an encounter again with a duck…

I say ‘again‘ because we see the same duck in the same general vicinity — near the creek just pass Monte Vista Court — just about every day the last couple of weeks. It does not appear to get scared or alarmed, in fact, doesn’t pay Leroy and me much attention.

As below…

Neither the duck or Leroy looked at each other. I don’t know know what Leroy was up to right then, does appear like he was trying to take a shit, but never did, or he was just nosing down real hard — looks funny, though.

Leroy last week…

Something-somewhere caught his attention as he ponders next to the church-school fence just off the G Street entrance/exit.

Anyway, a vague abstraction of dog-like procedures:

Pulling the tale…