After a delightful breakfast at a local restaurant, we decided to go back to our friend’s house, collect the dog, and do some exploring around the Chico area.

Our travels took us past fruit and nut orchards, the Sacramento River, rice fields, and finally the Bidwell-Sacramento State Park near Hamilton City. Our plan was to walk on the trail along Ox-Bow Lake. As we approached the trail, Buster, our friend’s 11 year old lab, headed to the lake for a drink. That’s when the adventure began.

The slope was steeper than Buster (or we) anticipated, and he slid down the bank and into the lake. When his thirst was quenched, he couldn’t make it back up the slope. Despite all our encouragement, he could only get part way up before sliding back down. We three senior citizens could not get enough solid footing to help him. Fortunately, after about 10 minutes (It seemed like hours.), 2 young men came along. They were sympathetic to Buster’s plight, and between the 2 of them they got Buster up the bank. The poor dog was wet, bedraggled and bushed from his struggles. From then on, he walked sedately along our sides and kept clear of the river bank as we continued our walk. The trail had dappled sunlight with butterflies, caterpillars, and a pretty view of the lake.

The path branched off to an abandoned farmhouse and an old nut orchard. Since that trail was somewhat overgrown and well populated with ticks, we decided to stay on the main trail. After our walk we headed back to our friend’s house and continued visiting. We discovered too late in the day that our friend had never been to a distillery. Since the area ones were closed, we added that to our list of must do activities for our next trip. (We must continue our journey tomorrow.)

We ended the day with a delicious takeout Mexican dinner from a local food truck. It paired perfectly with the excellent bottle of Zinfandel from the Mayo winery. It was a great ending to our eventful day.