Taking the Dog for a Spring Walk

Lately, once or maybe twice a week, it's been fantastically warm.  Over the weekend, my husband and I took Riley, our dog, for a long walk around our neighborhood before dinner to enjoy the warmth and smell the tulips.  Here's some documentation of the adventure:

Walk to the Boat House

I am a graduate student at Michigan State University, and my lab and office are located at the Kellogg Biological Station (http://www.kbs.msu.edu/).  Now that I'm "writing my dissertation" (a rather long and tedious process, currently in its beginning stages for me), I only stop in at KBS for half of the week.  Every now and then I need to walk the quarter mile or so along Gull Lake to KBS's Boat House, which is a historic boat house (owned by W.K. Kellogg of Kellogg's cereal) that has been converted to lab space.  Most importantly for me, it contained several empty, but working, fridges and freezers when I arrived and began my research.  As all of the freezers that are actually located in my lab were full upon my arrival, and remain full (of the same samples), a good deal of the stuff of my research (mostly ziploc bags and urinalysis cups full of mud) now lives in freezers in the Boat House.  The walk to the Boat House is a nice break from work in every season--I've photographed the short walk well.  Here is a glimpse of it on a cloudy day in early spring: