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Posts from the ‘Animals’ Category

Nov 25

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From Cabela’s to Walmart

Having awoken in a big box store parking lot this morning, we traveled 571 miles today only to find ourselves back in another big box store parking lot – our host this evening being Walmart in Red Bluff, CA.  It appears that we’ve come full-circle within some bizarre retail dry-camping merry-go-round.

Tomorrow’s itinerary calls for a route just over 200 miles; we are both so ready to be done with all this driving.

I’ve heard that many who travel full-time frequently limit their travel days to 100 miles and I’m beginning to really appreciate the wisdom of such an approach.  Sadly, Kelly and I do not have that luxury in our schedule.  All things being equal, today’s drive was pretty uneventful.  It could have been worse, so I will stop complaining.

Crossing the border into Oregon, Kelly decided to snap a few pictures of downtown Portland, one of our favorite cities.

Approaching the Oregon border

Always very happy to enter Oregon

Hmm, what is Kelly capturing here?

Fremont BridgePortland Convention Center spires

About two hours south of Portland, we stopped in Eugene for a simple lunch and a visit to the local dog park.  Lilly is a big fan of  the park as she is able to hunt gophers and chase her tennis ball.  Selfishly, Kelly and I like these dog park respites as doing so provides Lilly the opportunity to run like crazy and burn off some pent-up energy.

More fetch please

Lilly’s preferred post dog park recovery activity

I did all the driving today and find myself feeling much like Lilly in the picture above – tired and ready for some sleep.

Oct 12

Day 1: Los Banos, CA (part two)

Like many California State Parks, the San Luis Reservoir is decent enough, but way overpriced in my view – $38 bucks for no hook-ups is a bit on the steep side I think.  By the way, the Golden state will hit you up for an additional $1 to shower for five minutes.  That said, the campsites are huge, offer plenty of elbow room between neighboring sites, and are level.  Nice.

This time of year the park was mostly empty; so all in all, we had some nice downtime to relax.

Per usual, we did get out for some park exploring … or at least tried to.  Many of the most “marketed” trails were closed for the season; not sure what that’s all about.  Not to be deterred, we walked the park roads in an attempt to make the most of things.  In the end this was ok since the park was basically empty.

Also we did manage to see some wildlife during our stay.

Like these elk:

Elk grazing the fields

And lots of these bugs:

Desert Stink Beetle

And by far the biggest spider I’ve ever seen outside of a museum or zoo:

California Tarantula

Another big downer about this park is that many of the more heavily marketing trails are closed for the year, but not marked as such.  We found this out the hard way – after driving 15 minutes to the trail parking lot, walking another ten minutes to the trailhead, then finding access to the trail itself sufficiently cut off by a gate.

Rolling hills under clouds

The lone highway through the park

Despite some otherwise pretty scenery, I give this park a big thumbs down.

Not sure I can recommend this park

Once we settled in for the evening, I started a nice fire ($6 for a small bundle of wood) and Kelly made a fantastic pizza.  We had fresh-baked cookies for dessert (ok, they were Tollhouse).

Enjoying warm cookies and milk.

Afterwards, we settled in to begin watching season-1 of Showtime’s TV drama Homeland.  Wow, what a good show.

Sep 25

Welcome Home

Whenever Kelly or I return to the Airstream, Lilly immediately springs to life and wants to play.  I love that about her personality – she is so playful.

It really doesn’t matter that more often than not, Lilly has been curled in her bed dead asleep … once the door opens and someone new has arrived, she is ready to play.

Generally, Lilly prefers to play catch/fetch with one of two toys – a red chew toy (a bear Kelly has dubbed “Mr. Squeakers”) or her closely coveted tennis ball.  Tonight, as I walked through the door Lilly jumped into action and immediately went for the tennis ball.  As a smaller dog, she struggles to get a complete grip on the ball, but such size disadvantage does not quell her efforts.

Regardless of how my work day may have been, Lilly never fails to lift my spirits and put a smile onto my face.

As Lilly and I were goofing around, I snapped the following picture below.

Lilly and her ball

Sep 23

No Dogs Allowed

Kelly and I have become increasingly frustrated with all the NO DOGS restrictions here in Northern California (NorCal as the hipsters call it).  Coming from Washington state, we were accustomed to bringing our dogs along to hiking trails pretty much wherever we desire.  I guess we were spoiled in that sense.  Too bad the same cannot be said around here.

Our dog Lilly loves to join us on the trails and we are happy to have her join us.  Unfortunately, here in NorCal we’ve had to pass-up some really neat spots which would have otherwise been so cool to visit.  Damn this state.

Today, Kelly and I went to visit Windy Hill Preserve, one of the few open spaces in the area which allows dogs … on leashes.  Actually, we always walk Lilly on lease, so such restrictions are moot for us.  Anyway, the preserves is pretty nice.  Situated midway atop the Peninsula ridge-line, Windy Hill offers a nice mix of tree cover and open grasslands woven into a mostly up and down single track hike.  Outside of the tree cover, temperatures were a bit hot for my preference, but overall a nice hike.

Kelly and I like this place, but as it’s located about 20-25 minutes away, the location is not overly convenient.

Lilly seems to have a super-sense whenever we are headed to a hike and today was no exception.  There is no doubt that she is a big fan of Windy Hill.

A few snapshots from the hike are  pasted below.

Love the bark pattern on this tree

Some interesting art in the midst of the forrest

Lilly, impatiently waiting for Dave and Kelly.

Looking up through the tree cover

Lilly’s post hike routine

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