~6.5 miles @ ~19.8 min/mi

"That white dog can jump!" says Dr Mary, as we watch a puppy leaping twice her height toward a stick held overhead.

"Yuki is her name — it means 'snow' in Japanese," says the owner of the little furry ball of energy. It's Cute Canine Day at Great Falls National Park. We hike the Old Carriage Road, the Ridge Trail, and other pathways, where we meet a puggle (pug + beagle cross), a pair of nearly-identical big black Labrador brothers, a beautiful miniature Siberian husky, and countless others.

Trail talk between physicists includes disciplines that we wish we understood better, starting with thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. And advice: "Read Feynman's 1965 Nobel Prize lecture!" It discusses important phenomena that can be computed via methods that seem to be completely different. Maybe that's a clue that something in Nature is Really Important?

(trackfile) - ^z - 2017-02-14