A family of magpies lives in the field next to us. They fly back and forth calling and complaining. A family of six. They all look alike, parents and kids, same size, same color; shiny iridescent black set off by striking white. Big birds. They look alike until the youngsters start fluttering their wings and begging to be fed. Sometimes they’re all in our campsite at once, on the fire grate, the picnic table, the trees, and the bird feeder, sampling the suet. Talking amongst themselves. Nice family. A little noisy as neighbors, but nice family.
Walking the dog
My daughter writes trip reports and she’s not even on a trip. Well, not like we are anyway.
From: Becky Alexander [mailto:beckyalexander1@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 9:22 AM
To: Steve Taylor
Subject: Walking the dogSo, I walk the dog for around two miles every morning before breakfast, then again each evening after dinner. In the mornings I’m alone (nice quiet way to start the day), except on weekends, when Bri comes with. In the evenings, it’s usually me and Brian, along with the younger kids. Saturday night, we were exploring the neighborhood east of us, and found a nice park to hang out at for a while. There were a couple of other families there, and we were enjoying it – except for the dogs in the yard next door. They were a pair of Chihuahua-ish things that yipped incessantly. After around 10 minutes, the owners of the house came home, and the dogs shut up. The owners then went into their kitchen, and sat at the table, right next to the patio door, which they left open to enjoy the summer evening. After a few minutes, the dogs got bored, and started up their barking again. The response of the owners was to shut the patio door, to cut off the obnoxious noise, leaving the dogs outside to bark! How’s that for an oblivious dog owner? Everyone at the park, though annoyed, had to laugh at the absolute cluelessness.
Sunday night, we were out walking again. Conner rode in his stroller for the first three miles, but after the third park stop, decided to run along with his sister. Teigan was riding her scooter, in a cute little peach-colored sundress. Conner was barefooted, his little naked feet slapping on the sidewalk. The dog did her business in a person’s yard, so being responsible dog owners, Brian and I stopped to clean it up. We kept an eye on the kids, who were still racing ahead of us, and saw they had stopped at the next corner. As we watched, Teigan took off her shoes, and they both sat on the curb, letting sprinkler run-off water wash over their bare feet. I was wishing I had a camera – they were pretty cute. As we walked to catch up with them, they got down in the water and crawled around – being dogs I assume. Still pretty cute. However, as we got all the way up to them, we realized they were laying face down in the water, slurping. EEWWWW! Guess we had never actually TOLD them not to drink water running in the gutter. Oh well – I’m guessing it’s not fatal.
Have a good day.
Love,
Becky
Summer sucks
Sure the weather is nice, the trees and flowers are in bloom, and birds are everywhere, but say you’re in a state park, next to a trout stream, and it doesn’t get dark until nine o’clock. You’re not going to go inside the house before dark, are you? And then you want to take a walk around the camp loop in the dark because the moon is so bright you don’t even need a flashlight. Now it’s ten o’clock and you haven’t even checked the evening’s email yet. Then, suddenly, it’s eleven o’clock and you haven’t taken a shower yet. I tell you, summer is exhausting. But I guess it could be worse. We could live farther north where the summer days last even longer.
Ridgway
Durango to Ridgway, sixty air miles. Drive out the park, turn left, and drive right there on highway 550, only eighty highway miles. We drove out the park and turned right. South on 550, west on 160, north on 145, east on 162, and there you are, Ridgway, one-hundred ten miles. One-hundred ten miles, and we didn’t drive over Red Mountain Pass. We looped around and went over Lizard Head. Lizard Head is steep on the north side, we smelled the brakes and pulled over to let them cool part way down, but it’s no Red Mountain. No string of steep fifteen mile per hour switchbacks on Lizard Head. So here we are at Ridgway State Park, the place we always get hugs from Danny and Jeannie, perennial camp hosts, but they’re not here this year. They moved on…, but not far. We can still go into town, Ridgway, and get hugged. We know where they are.
Durango
Another busy week. My brain is tired. We didn’t really get out and around much. No drive up to Silverton. We did get to wave at the steam train as it went by every morning. The weather is warm. We’re back to a little altitude, maybe 6,500 feet, so the nights are cool, fifty degrees. We saw the space station and space shuttle go by one night. The space station is about the brilliance of Venus, but much faster. It rose in the west, followed by the shuttle, and disappeared overhead a few minutes later, presumably in the earth’s shadow. It was going so fast, it must circle the globe about once an hour. Tomorrow, Ridgway State Park.