Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk at Wagon Hill in Durham. Every single person we ran into there (all 5 or 6 of them) had a dog. There are fields and woods and shoreline and paths leading over and through all of it. Access is free. Parking is free. There are even free doggie waste bags provided for visitors.
It sparked memories of a visit I took with Rachel last fall to Wan Wan Oukoku in Shiga. This is what I wrote about it in my proto-blog at the time:

A few weeks ago I brought Rachel to Wan Wan Oukoku. It's a dog park. Kind of disgusting really. They charge about $12 admission to a little theme park with petting areas, dogs in pens, some dog shows, a place where you can line up to take a dog on a 50 meter walk across a lawn with 5 attendents there to make sure you don't have any trouble or get lost along the way. (No wonder it costs $12 to get in with all that staff!) There's a gift shop, of course. And the usual ice cream and hot dog stands. There was a little choo-choo train tha they charge an extra $3 per person for to take a ride around a track you could walk in under 10 minutes.
I think the dogs in the petting section were drugged or outright lobotomized. It was a Saturday and there was a full crowd so most of the little dogs were napping on customers' laps. The ones that weren't grabbed wandered around aimlessly until they were gathered up by some little kid. None of the dogs barked or made any noise at all. They didn't run or jump or lick or wag their tails. I hated it. I'd have felt better if they had just stocked the place with those Sony Aibo robot dogs. That's really the ultimate Japanese pet. See. So this is what happens when I try to get out and enjoy the activities available here. This is why all I usually do is sit home reading and surfing the net on the weekends.

Nice, huh?
Anyway, the picture above is from our walk yesterday. When I pointed out the little inlet to Rachel she stopped right in her tracks, went silent for a split second and then exclaimed-- "Oh my gosh!! Those curves are perfect! I can't believe it. It's perfect. It's art!"