28 December 2016 The Wilderness Center

We don't visit The Wilderness Center often because of their restrictions on which trails dogs may walk. To see all of the preserve, we usually leave them at home. Today we planned to just walk the dog-friendly trails. The weather was perfect. We made a couple finds before we came upon the area where the Wilderness Center had recently cut down their ash trees. Emerald ash borer is changing the face of the woods. Many parks and preserves are being aggressive with wholesale removal of ash trees. The damage caused by the emerald ash borer is swift and soon fatal.

Phineas was happy to be out for a walk and managed to get himself wrapped up in my legs

The preserves holly stand was decked out for the season with plenty of berries.

It was sad to see the large numbers of ash trees which had been felled. This was just a small sampling of the felled trees

Amazingly the caches survived the work or someone on the crew knew where they were.

The downed trees gave Lizzie a chance to show he Aussie jumping skills.

The downed limbs also gave her a chance to be silly.