Madeline, Madeline....Part 1

There is always that blog post with so much content and stories and pictures that it holds up all the other posts until it is completed - therefore, I am going to break it up into a couple of different posts to make it more manageable for all of us. 

I am a huge fan of tradition, and one of my favorites that we started 3 years ago was our annual trip to Madeline Island, one of the apostle islands off of Bayfield, WI.  The first year was an adventure as it was our first year up there with Sarah and Jeff Cannon...last year my dad was able to join the trip with us as the Cannon's were awaiting the arrival of little Allie.   This year, I would call the trip, "the more the merrier!"  We keep talking about how much we love this trip every year, so we had John Kaufman, John Cannon (and Jenny) and John Gould (and Tessa) and our newest little camper Allie Cannon!

We started the trip with a hike at Warner Beach - not far from Bayfield.  We determined it would be a good place to stretch our legs and let poor Mikko out of the car.  The chatty park ranger gave us a 30 minute speech about nothing that we didn't already know as we were trying to prepare for the hike, but did talk about local wolves and bears that roam the trails that we were about to adventure on.

5 minutes into the hike, Mikko was pulling so hard on her leash that we were all getting a little annoyed at her as we were slipping in the mud trying to control her.  As we hike with her frequently off the leash, against better judgement, I recommended taking her off the leash so she wouldn't pull us.  this turned out to be a great idea as she jetted off into the woods so far that we couldn't hear or see her and Jeremy and I were convinced that we were going to have to find another dog.  a couple of heartbeaking moments later, a leashless pit bull (thankfully not a bear or wolf) stepped on her foot and we heard the howl of our little Mikko, the run in iwth the other dog scared her enough slow down and let us catch up - needless to say, Mrs. Independent was back on her leash for the weekend. 

The views were fabulous and once we got past the mud, the hike was great too...however, unfortunately, I will always remember it as the hike we almost lost our dog.