A nice January day to go afield with dog and gun

Yesterday we had some unseasonably nice weather-- 60 degrees in January. I took advantage of it and took Lagniappe the dog up on Maryland Heights to enjoy the view of Harpers Ferry. For those of you who haven't yet made the climb, I recommend it. (For the somewhat strenuous trail you'll need to be in some sort of shape. Note: Round is not a shape.)




And here's Lagniappe hamming it up. The Armory Engine House is clearly visible behind him. It's that small building right next to the tracks. For the history buffs, that's the building that America's first terrorist, John Brown, holed up in until a party of Marines stormed it and escorted him to jail. The story's dicsussed in greater detail in this blog's December archive so I won't go into it anew.






This one's just Lagniappe, actually standing still and looking good for the camera instead of turning his head or lolling his tongue out as he usually does when I try to photograph him. He's actually behaving here. But I knew it wouldn't last...and it didn't.




As we're walking back down, he finds this stick. A normal dog would ignore it, or chew on it, or maybe offer it up as a fetch toy, but not this one. He has to run back and forth along the trail with it as fast as he can. Naturally it's on this part of the walk that we encounter a couple of senior citizens out for a walk and Lagniappe-- true to form--runs right between them with his stick. Of course being a dog and not having a very good grasp of either physics or spatial dimensions, he doesn't allow clearance room for the stick and it whacked the old man hard enough to nearly knock him down. Once again I have to tell people that I have no idea whose dog that is.




And because it was such a nice day, I took one of my favorite pistols out for a bit of air. There's a nifty litle spot I know on the way back from Harper's Ferry where I sometimes stop to shoot. I love this particular pistol for it's graceful design, it's flawless functioning, and it's history.

It's a vintage military Browning Model 1935, also known as a "Hi-Power" in it's civilian nomenclature. Made by Fabrique Nationale in Herstal, Belgium. It's chambered in 9mm as was typical of European service pistols in the 1900's and it holds 14 rounds of ammunition--almost twice as many as any other service pistol of that time. This one is an old service pistol with the military baked-on black enamel paint but I can't pin down the country that used it since it has suspiciously few markings compared to the usual military guns of it's day. It could have been any one of a number of Allied countries but it's mine now and it shoots accurately and reliably every time I take it out. This design ranks right up there with the U.S. Model 1911 .45 automatic (also a John Browning design) as one of the most prolific pistols in the world. They're still in production today around the world while most militaries have gone on to more modern designs, it's still a favorite of civilian shooters around the globe. I prefer the old veterans like this over the new ones that I could buy today because these old ones have a sense of history about them. I don't know where this gun's been but it was somewhere. And a day like yesterday just begged for a little range time so I took it out for fifty rounds of tin-can-killing exercise.

Lagniappe sat in the car and listened to the radio while I shot. I really can't blame him because the Sean Hannity show was on. Lagniappe loves Sean Hannity.