A Stroll Along the River ..... Or Not

Today was a beautiful sunny day .... warmish. A day not to be wasted.

So, in the afternoon, I went for a stroll on my scooter. I was determined to not spend money so I avoided shops. I even avoided going to Timmies or Beanos or Starbucks or Good Earth. All places I passed on my journey. And, for those who don't know, those are all coffee shops. The stroll was pleasant enough. I took some pictures, as well, of things that struck me as interesting.

I was close to home when I decided that it might be nice to go up 4th Street and maybe all the way to the Elbow (River). There's a beautiful walking path along the river, much like along the Assiniboine in Winnipeg. So, I did go up to this path. I went along the path for a ways. Then I crossed the bridge and the road to continue along the path on the other side to get me back home.

The 'Or Not' part comes in here. Within 50 metres of me was a Coyote. A wild Coyote. It was interested in my scooter. Or me. Or whatever. It started coming towards me. I backed up the hill as non-chalantly as possible, hoping not to scare the coyote. It kept on coming towards me. By the time I was at the top of the hill, though, it had stopped and was just watching me. This made me happy, and I crossed the road back to the path where I came from in a hurry. Probably the coyote wouldn't have done anything. I wasn't really scared. Just startled to see it there. Still, a wild dog, a wild animal is not something you want to approach. It was cute, though. Really cute. I was actually contemplating taking a picture before I left. That would have been awesome. I'm kicking myself that I didn't because who gets so close to nature when you actually have a camera with you?! I was a bit surprised that a coyote would be in the middle of the city, but I had heard on the news that they were along the rivers. I still didn't think they would be that close to downtown. They were supposed to be mostly by parks.

This experience kind of reminded me of when my sister and I were younger and went for a bike ride out into the country. Lo and behold, there was a skunk in front of us. We didn't want to startle the skunk, but, turning around and going the other way back would have meant another 3 miles as we were approximately 1 mile from home. So, we followed the skunk slowly, hoping it wouldn't spray us. More intrigued than scared. Thank goodness it didn't. It must have been a baby skunk because it's tail was up for some of the time but there was no spray. What were we thinking??!!!