Healing
Brandy is on antibiotics until tomorrow morning and has finished her sucralfate. The sucralfate has the appearance of chalk and was given orally three times a day in a slurry with a syringe. At first Brandy hated the sucralfate but Shirley and I praised her so much that at the end it seemed she almost looked forward to it. The syringe made it easy as we just inserted it between the teeth in her closed mouth and squirted about two cc. for each dose.
We went on a six-mile hike yesterday starting at Ellie Lane. Just past Table Rock, down the hill and at the bottom of the valley is a granite outcropping sometimes called “slick rock”. On the east side of slick rock is the beginning of an unnamed trail marked with ducks. We have long wanted to find a connecting trail from Ellie Lane Trail to the network of trails on the Ramona side of the hills. We took the trail until we lost the ducks but continued on in the same direction. Brandy led us on the game trail until we finally came to a truck trail, that became a gravel road, that became a paved road. Weeds and brush were growing in the middle of the road, but sand bags at the washouts indicated some low level of maintenance.
Our original plan was to return the way we had come, but according to my GPSr, the nearest point on Ellie Lane Trail was about a third of a mile to the south. Brandy led us on a barely discernible game trail that eventually disappeared and at which time I took the lead up the hill. A trail to the south soon reappeared, Brandy took the lead, and near the peak I realized that we had been there a few months back, approaching the peak from the south from Ellie Lane Trail. At that time we saw a group of hikers coming toward us from the north and wondered if there was a trail that we had missed. Now, at least, we had another way to the trail network on the Ramona side. Ellie Lane Trail peak lay before us about two hundred meters away.
We picked up Ellie Lane Trail, following it mostly south to Iron Mountain Peak Trail, then down the hill to Wild Horse Trail, then Ellie Lane Trail and back to the staging area.
Brandy’s nail is obviously no longer an issue for hiking. Ellie Lane Trail is extremely rocky with sharp rocks of many sizes and Brandy, as usual, seemed not to notice.