HIT THE TRAIL (Mountains, Day 2)

After a long night of thunder/lightning/hail, I wasn't sure what the next day might bring. Anxious to find out, I woke everyone up as soon as I heard the first bird chirp. About 2 hours later, the sun came up. Thanks to me, we were all awake to see it.

We spent most of Day 2 hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT, for short). Dutch even let me try on his backpack so I'd know what it feels like to be a real hiker. My human said the PCT runs all the way from Mexico to Canada (2,650-miles, according to my friend Google) and that every year a whole bunch of people walk every mile of it.

I thought she was lying. Until we met one of them. His name was Wrangler (which I thought was kind of a weird name for a human) and he'd been walking the trail for over a month. My human kept asking him all sorts of hikey-questions, but all I wanted to know was how he ended up with name like a dog.

It's a trail name, my human said. She explained it's like a nickname hikers on the trail give each other. How she knew this, I have no idea. Then I heard her tell the Wrangler guy that her trail name was "Downhill" when she hiked the Appalachian Trail (AT for short) a few years back.

Wait - what? Did everyone have a trail name but me? I suddenly felt really left out. No backpack of my own, no cool hikey-name. What kind of mountain dog was I? My human quickly pointed out that Dutch didn't have a trail-name either. Well that was easy: Princess. Just like it says on the pink collar someone got him after he faked a limp during his first (and last, up until now) camping trip.

With Dutch out of the way, I christened myself Ibex - a fancy kind of mountain goat I saw once on Animal Planet. They are super cool and mountainy and don't wear backpacks either.