guys' weekend

Shelley is out of town with friends for a retreat this weekend, so Max and I are on our own here at the house. So with nothing to do this morning, I decided that we would go for a hike in the mountains nearby our complex out where we live. I look at these mountains every day, and have always wondered what was beyond them, so we were up and at 'em early to beat the sun. The hike was really peaceful, and I think Max really enjoyed being off the leash for a while. I can't believe how beautiful the land is beyond the mountains. I could literally see our apartments from the mountain top, and had no idea that this much beauty was this close. If you face towards our apartments on one side of the mountain, this is what you see:

All of that was farmland only 4 years ago. Now it consists of 8 university campuses and 5 new apartment complexes with multiple 6 lane roads and a subway under construction. I literally live in the game Sim City where you build an entire city on your computer. It isn't a gradual development into a city. They are literally building an entire brand new city in the course of 5 years. What took Charlotte 50-60 years to develop, the government here is doing in 5. It is unbelievable the pace of construction, but that also makes for a lot of noisy dumptrucks and consistently changing closed down section of roads. The amazing thing is when you turn around in the same spot on the mountain top 180 degrees, you get this view:
That is miles of pristine farmland. Those terraces were probably cut in the land hundreds of years ago and are still being farmed today. This was the part that Maximus loved in particular, all of this open land to run on. I stopped under a tree to do some reading and listen to some music while he ran non-stopped for a solid hour. It was a great way to tire him out. The whole time we were on the trail Max and I only ran into one lone friendly farmer and his dog on the way to the well to get some water for the day. Here is a picture of the trail:

And here is one happy pup.
I am still not sure what kind of dog Maximus is. He doesn't love the water like a retriever, but he does love open grass fields, particularly sniffing out birds and chasing a frisbee. He looks nothing like a bird dog. He can run wide open at what I think is 18mph for 5 minutes nonstopped (I clocked this because he likes to race me on the electric scooter, but I'm not sure if my electric scooter speedometer is right or not. I have been going faster than Shelley before and my scooter says I'm doing 34 kmh while hers says she is doing 50kmh. Somebody's is way off.). They say that mutts make the best dogs. Maybe Pedigree puts steroids in their puppy chow. Who knows? Either way, he has the energy of a 24 pack of Red Bull 100% of the time he is not asleep.

All in all this was a great guys' morning getaway, and something I will definitely take more advantage of in the future!