Sick as a dog!

Last night I was sick as a dog for no particular reason. Dave and I pretty much ate the same things yesterday, with just a couple exceptions. He was fine, but I sure got it. It felt like a big hand grabbed me in the middle and squeezed, I got cramps, and all sorts of other unpleasant things happened. I have not been that sick since I was a little kid! And of course today I am just sore all over. Bleech!

Walk around Battle Ground Lake

I took Barclay for a walk around the lake on Tuesday. I wanted to go somewhere cool and shady where he could jump in the water if he wanted to. That was the perfect place to go! But there were a lot of people there, even for a Tuesday. Luckily most of them were in the wading area, and so we only ran into a couple groups on the lake trail. One couple looked like they were on an expedition, and they were from out of town so we chatted for a bit, talked about what other stuff there was to see in the area. It's funny to see people outfitted for a long hike on the lake trail, because it's really just a stroll, and it's less than a mile total. Though sometimes I have gone with a full backpack just to get in shape for carrying my pack. So I suppose then I look silly too :)

It's hard to get Barclay to sit still for a picture - he wants to go go go! There's so much to see!

Like baby ducks!

We stopped and waded around in the water a bit here and there. I just wanted to make sure he stayed cool. He doesn't know if he can swim yet, so I want to encourage him to play in the water whenever we get a chance. One of these days we'll have to get him out into water where he can paddle a bit. I think he would enjoy it.

Barclay and Jack

Barclay and Jack were playing hard the other evening, and what great expressions they get on their faces. They look so fierce! If you didn't know they were playing you'd think they were trying to kill each other! It's just great to see them playing, they are best buddies :)

Turkeys are out, chicks are in

The turkey poults have made the big move from the protection of the heated brooder to the cold harsh reality of life in a chicken tractor. I was worried about them the first night, and for some reason, just because they are turkeys I guess and not very bright, they chose to sleep on the unprotected end of the tractor in the grass instead of the sheltered end with a perch. But they survived, and by the second night they had figured out how to snuggle up together on the perch.



In the other tractor is black mama hen with her NINE chicks! I thought there were only eight, but now that they are running around more we counted nine. I would love to let all these little guys loose to run around the yard and scratch in the fresh grass, but the cats would go after the chicks. So everyone stays safely in the tractor.



As you can see from the little feather-legged chick in front, we have two cochins in this brood. I hope at least one is a hen!

The hawk

Yesterday was hot and the air was still. As I was driving home I passed a big meadow along the road, full of dry, yellow grass and ringed with fir trees at the far edge. My eye was caught by a glimpse of something brown against the dark green trees: a large hawk, floating lazily over the field in big swooping circles. As I got closer I realized there was a boy at the edge of the field, clearing weeds along the road. He had a wheelbarrow full of weeds he'd already cut down, and was taking a break, leaning on the handle of his pitchfork with his hat tipped back, also watching the hawk.

Scenes like this are one reason I love living out in the country.

First hot day with the AC turned on

Last year...

This year...

Poor Barclay! He's such a hot dog anyway, and he's got a lot more fluff this year! He loves to sleep behind the toilet pressed up against the cool porcelain, or stretched out over a cooling vent!

The Lawnmower rides again!

I've once again gotten the mower running. It had thrown a belt, the tranny was acting up, and it was making a horrible metal-on-metal noise which made me very uncomfortable last time Dave used it. I thought for sure it was time for a new mower. But we stopped and looked at them at Lowes the other day and the cheapest one equivalent to ours was still $1000!

So I pulled the deck off and found a brace under the deck had rusted through on one end and gotten bent in so one of the blades was brushing it every go-round. So I removed the brace, replaced the belt, sharpened the blades, greased whatever needed greasing, and put the deck back on (with Dave's help, that thing is a bear to wrestle around). He took it for a test drive and mowed the grass along the road and it did fine, and didn't even make any funny noises. It still needs to be hooked up to the charger before it will start, because I think I burned out the charging system last year when I hooked up a battery backwards, but other than that, it sounds like it might just make it another season.

I've got to get out of this place!

Another beautiful sunny weekend (our weekend is mid-week) when we should be out camping and hiking, working on the boat, fishing, or doing other fun stuff, and instead we are weed-whacking, cutting down blackberry vines, mowing, and digging up our patch of invasive bamboo. And repairing that damned rider mower again!

We have been talking lately about getting a smaller place where we don't have three acres to maintain. I'm ready to go now!

Geocaching and Travel Bugs - Sharkey

A few years ago I was into Geocaching, the online GPS treasure hunt game. I would still be if my GPS hadn't become outdated. I'll get a new one someday and do it again. One of the fun side games is Travel Bugs. Travel Bugs are things you put in the cache with a special number/tag on them, and you usually give them a goal, and they get picked up and passed along, and logged along the way, and it's fun to see where they go. I've done four of them.

Sharky was a stuffed shark. I think I found him in a cache, and thought it was hilarious. After he hung around a while I decided to send him travelling. In April 2002 I put a tag on him and sent him on his way.

My goal was to send him from the NW, all the way to my friend Heather and her son Brandon in Godfrey Illinois. They were finding Geocaches out their way, so we picked a cache they knew they could find in a hurry when he showed up, and made that his goal. We dropped him off in Washougal, WA, as I recall. As you can see from the map above, sending something by Geocache is not exactly the most direct way of getting something from point A to point B.

Along the way people posted pictures of his adventures:

He hitched a ride with Barbie between caches.

He hung out poolside at some resort on the east coast.

And someone took him to a petshop to visit the other sharks!

A year and a half later, in October 2003 he landed in the Piasa Bird cache near Alton, IL (the the Piasa bird is an interesting story in itself if you google it). Heather and Brandon went and picked him up and took him home. What a fun little adventure we had! Tomorrow I'll tell you about the other Travel Bugs who didn't have quite as successful a journey :)