I got a macro! Hooray!
Category Archives: randoms
The dogs and I spent the last three days of our trip exploring Colorado. I’ve never really been before (unless you count passing through while sleeping most of the way), so it was nice to finally experience a little more. I left my parents’ a day early so I wouldn’t have to have all-day drives and the pups and I could take our time in that big rocky mountain state. We drove through national parks and monuments, stopped for hikes in gorgeous canyons along the way, and even hit up the local dog parks when we could. We planned to camp, but weather pushed us to motels instead, and that was okay with me. They are good travelers, my little ones. We had a good time.
I beat the weather this time. Well, sort of. Every year when I go visit my parents in the Black Hills, the weather wreaks havok on my plans. Two years ago, I spent the night in a community center when the interstate shut down from too much snow. With no intentions of letting that happen again, last year I chose to travel a month earlier, and by airplane. But of course, it snowed too much just before I arrived and the trails I wanted to hike were all closed. Then my flight out got canceled due to freezing rain and I was stranded at the airport for eight hours. This year, I would not let the weather win again. I opted to drive once more (for flexibility if the weather did plan to suck) and to leave yet another month earlier.
I arrived on Monday, promptly checked the weather report, and discovered I’d have one nice day of weather… Tuesday. So mom and I (and the dogs) got up early that morning and hiked Harney Peak (one of the hikes the weather thwarted me from last year), and I showed that weather who’s boss! Of course, the next few days were cold, windy, or snowy… but I had that one good day, so my trip was a success. The only incident that I hold any sort of contempt at the weather for is when I woke up at 3 am one night, about to wet the bed, and had to go piss outside in the freezing, snowing, wind. I should explain. See, my parents live in a tiny one-bedroom ranch house. They built a chicken coop last week and decided I’d get to sleep in it, rather than taking up their entire living room during my stay. So me and the dogs had our own lovely 12-foot cabin, equipped with an air mattress, space heater, and no chickens. Oh, and no toilet. I’d have gone inside the house, but their dog would bark and I didn’t want to wake up the house at that early hour. So I bared my ass and peed ice… for like two minutes straight. It was miserable. But peeing aside, the chicken shack was quite nice and will never actually house chickens now. It’s going to stay a guest shack… and a guest shack with no toilet. Let’s hope future guests remember to let everything out before they go to bed.
I know you’d all love for me to continue with stories of my peeing adventures, but here are a few photos from the week…
Zoe at Sylvan Lake after we hiked Harney Peak
Bill’s barn
Baby Shitty stalks like a lion when hunting horses
Clancy is cute
Bobert unloads hay while wearing one of the many hats in his new hat collection
Jackie and Jemma
Sue’s dogs
Zoe on the trail to Harney Peak
and Pumpkin
While it’s still 90 degrees down in the desert, and the trees are maintaining their springtime hues, up here in the mountains, the temps are cooler and the fall color is at full throttle. Not surprisingly, this photographer could not be happier. Yesterday, the dogs and I hiked Daly Canyon, and today Ecker Hill (with old canine roommate, Chloe), and with such brilliant colors everywhere, I had to post. I love fall.
I drank a cup of decaf coffee today, which I think was not actually decaf. Now it’s 1 a.m., I can’t sleep, and Terrah’s telling me to update this blog. So here’s a magic twig I saw this afternoon. WHOA, OHH, it’s MAGIC, you KNOWWWWW….
A couple days before I left for Jackson, Becky posted a photo on her Facebook page. It was a photo of Paintbrush Divide, and it made me desperately want to hike there. It’s a 20-mile hike, up to over 10,000 feet, but I didn’t care. We would go there. Nevermind that I’ve hardly been hiking at all this year, and it would be the longest day hike I’ve ever done. The way I saw it, who cares if it kills me? Why do a shorter hike that you’ll soon forget about when you can do an epic, back-breaking one that you’ll remember forever? And so last Saturday morning, with grand plans of waking up early and hitting the trail, we slept in. But don’t worry, we still hit the trail.
The plan was to do the entire Paintbrush Divide loop, which heads up Cascade Canyon to Lake Solitude, over the divide, and then back down Paintbrush Canyon to the car… but well, I puttered out from not eating enough on the trail and carrying too much extra water. We reached Lake Solitude, the resting stop before making the final uphill ascent to the divide, and I downed some Emergen-C and some carbs and instantly felt better. From there, we could see the trail to the top, and it looked simple enough, but it was getting late, and though I felt great, I wanted to keep feeling great. Heading up to the divide and down the other side would tack two extra hours onto our time, and so I had to make the hard decision to say no to the place I wanted to see so badly. We turned around, and headed back for the car. There’s always next time…
Several hours later, covered in dirt, we arrived back at dusk. In the end, we hiked 18 miles, which almost seems like a waste to not have just done two extra miles for the full loop, but those extra two miles are the most brutal ones… so I think we made a good decision. We picked huckleberries and rinsed off in the lake, changed clothes and headed out for a beer.
Becky in Cascade Canyon
a pretty red bird that let me be his friend and get really close
Becky shrinks her swollen feet in the chilly water of Lake Solitude
one of the many marmot friends we made
and a pika
and a moose
and as Becky is a plant biologist, we also made friends with all the flowers, like these paintbrushes and elephantheads.
the fresh huckleberries we picked and chowed down on at the end of the hike
and of course, my infamous bridge pose.
It’s been almost three years since I lived there, and two since I’ve been back to visit, but I finally got back to Jackson this past week and a half on my way to and from Montana for work. I opted to drive instead of fly so I could stop and see Becky, who moved there from Kanab a few months ago, and some friends in Park City on the way home. Jackson is so beautiful, but man, that town seriously sucks too. I have a love/hate relationship with the place… love the land, hate the people. SO MANY PEOPLE. Luckily, Becky lives out in the middle of nowhere in Kelly, with the grandest, unobstructed view of the Grand (and the rest of the Tetons) from her window. I spent the weekend hiking my ass off and photographing wildlife before heading up to Montana for a couple days, and then back to Jackson for a few more… before continuing south to Park City, and finally home last night. I wasn’t due to return until today, but sometimes home just beckons you and everything else takes a back seat. Road trips give you so much time to think that my brain is pretty fried, and I just wanted to get back into the mindless drill of everyday life so I can stop thinking for a little bit. It’s not really working for me yet, but at least I’m home with the furry family, getting my snuggles on with Haley and co…
My broccoli is ready for harvest!
My bell peppers are getting huge!
I have hundreds of grape tomatoes!
But sadly, it is not all good news… my two favorite tomato plants (green zebra and ananes noire) succumbed to verticillium wilt and had to be ripped from the earth to spare the other plants from the same dreadful fate.
Other news not pictured: my cherry tomatoes are finally turning red! And my strawberries have tapped into their inner zombie, coming back from the dead! This morning, the blossoms that had disappeared for so long rose once again, and my heart filled with joy at the thought of not having killed everything.
I’ve had so many posts I’ve been trying to catch up on lately, but I get so busy with work and travel, personal life and play, that they all just keep getting pushed back. I’ll write something to post, then never finish. And so tonight, while I’ve tried to push some out, and can’t find the motivation to do so, I’ve come to a simpler solution… just forget about it and post some photos. I think that’s why people come here anyway…
I rang in my quarter century birthday by catching bats in the middle of the night!
I planted two more gardens… but this dill plant is not mine.
Molly took a cute photo of me and my cute boyfriend.
I saw Busta Rhymes’ likeness in the Cedar Mountain trees.
breakin’ all the rules somewhere in Pennsylvania
campfire art
Until now, the only food I have harvested for myself was a basil plant I had in college. Of course, I couldn’t use it after a while, because my cats began to rub themselves all over it, leaving their hair stuck to the leaves. Would you like some hairball with that spaghetti? No thanks. So it sat there in my apartment collecting hair (and dust), while bewitching my fingers with a delectable smell each time I touched it. I held onto that plant for a few years, watching it wither and wilt, and then blaze back into life several times over. That plant seemed to withstand anything. It even survived several cross-country moves, keeping me company in the passenger seat of my shoddy ’95 Taurus, until its roots finally choked itself to death somewhere along I-80.
I’ve grown other herbs over the years since then, but never for eating, because of those blasted cats. I just like the smell of them. This year though, the cat hair will not win… because I’m done with indoor gardening (well, except for my houseplants and cacti). I’m taking it outside. And my dinner plate will be full of my own hair-free growings this summer. Strawberries, cherry tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, rosemary, lemon thyme, oregano, pineapple sage, basil (sweet and mexican cinnamon) and parsley for pesto, echinacea and mint for tea, catnip for the cats, and aloe vera for that desert sun. But wait, that’s just from my patio garden. Later this week, I am planting my other garden, up in the greenhouse at work. There I will be growing spinach, green zebra and ananes noire tomatoes, grape tomatoes, red bell peppers (and more yellow ones), broccoli, and lettuce. My belly can’t wait. Everyone is invited to dinner at my house.
lemon thyme
baby strawberries
ladybug on a thistle weed that I yoinked from the ground (after I relocated the ladybug, of course)
Dylan and I celebrate having finished planting my patio garden on Saturday.
parsley for my pesto
weird bee on my irises
pretty weeds
flower leaves
And yours truly, the attempted gardener herself. Let’s hope I don’t kill them all!
