Another Lesson Imparted by the Desert...

In my last BCA newsletter article (Lessons from the Desert, Summer 2013) I wrote about some of the things I have learned from the desert and the experiences that I have had out there.  Looking back though, I know I left out one key lesson, and this very week I learned that lesson many times over, so it's only appropriate that I follow that article up with the story of the final lesson: patience.

Patience has a tendency to wax and wane with moods and circumstances, but thanks to the desert I have learned to keep a liberal supply on hand at all times, because you just never know what is going to pop up.  This week I headed out to the desert on Tuesday, just after 9:00 am.  I checked and double checked that I had everything I needed in the truck, since I had unloaded everything the week before due to an unfortunate incident with leaking water on and around my sleeping materials that also helped cultivate some patience.  I also checked the weather, as I always do, and noted a 20% chance of thunderstorms; but decided that was not enough to cancel my trip and off I went.  It takes me just over three hours of driving to get to the site where I am working, and thanks to the enormous Wyoming sky, I knew I was going to have trouble for probably the last 40 minutes of the trip.  As I approached the massive steely grey clouds perched happily directly over the entire proposed wilderness, with no obvious plans to go anywhere, I began to glance nervously at the clay surface of the road.  If I can just make it below the checkerboard, I thought to myself as sticky conglomerations of clay began attaching themselves to my tire tread, if I can just get to public land, I'll make camp beside the road and wait for things to dry out.

Probably about 50 yards from the end of the private property mine field known as the checkerboard I began to fishtail...badly.  Going no more than five miles per hour, I maneuvered my way perhaps another 20 yards down the road before slow-motion sliding off the road and into a ditch, one tire perched unhappily on the lip of a culvert.  Now this was a pickle I had never been in before, and as I said in my last article, attitude is everything, so I skidded and slipped out of the truck in my flip-flops (as I had not even reached my destination yet my hiking boots were stowed in the truck bed), felt the mud squish between my toes, and set about locking in the hubs.  Once in four-wheel drive I was able to rock the truck back enough to slide my tire off the culvert (causing no harm to the tire or the culvert, thank goodness!) and slosh through the mucky ditch, up the other side, and along beside the road to a nice flat place where I could wait for things to dry out.  I laid in the truck bed reading a book for over an hour waiting for the lightning to subside and the road to dry out.  After tentative testing of the road surface (this time in hiking boots!) I felt okay about continuing and even got a few hours of work in before the sun went down.

In the dusky evening twilight I made my dinner and enjoyed some momentary peace, eating ramen noodles and fruit snacks.  I hopped out of the truck around 8:00 pm to check on the charging I-pad in the cab, and to my dismay found one mostly flat tire deflating slowly under the rear passenger side of my truck.  Patience don't fail me now!  I changed the tire in the soft soil and fading light - digging through all of the storage compartments of the truck to find a board to put under the jack and then having to jump up and down on the tire iron to loosen air-wrench tightened lug nuts.  I finished with only moments of fading grey left in the sky, and went to bed feeling pretty okay about how everything had worked out and how fast I had gotten at changing a tire.

In the morning new dilemmas presented themselves: if the sidewall of the tire is torn then it will need to be replaced, and if that is the case it will take a few days to get the new tire in and I should return to Laramie.  If, however, the tire is merely punctured it can be patched in a matter of minutes and I should drive the considerably shorter distance to Rock Springs.  The problem though, is that the tire was still caked completely in the sticky, gluey mud from the day before.  All attempts to rinse it off would have completely depleted my water supply in short order, and in the desert I kind of need my water.  I decided to hike the road I was on to finish that portion of my inventory, and face this dilemma upon my return after I'd had a good while to think about it.  In the end I opted to drive to the nearest gas station, fill the tire with air, and use their water to hopefully locate it's flaw.  I was in luck of course, as Point of Rocks lay conveniently on the way to Rock Springs without taking me much further from Laramie, and they provide both compressed air and water and to my delight I determined that there was a nail embedded in my tire and Rock Springs was the clear choice.

Because I have had several bad experiences with every Walmart tire center, every time I have had to go to one, (but I had to go to them, as the tire was covered by a warrantee purchased there) I tried to make this transaction as simple as possible, and left them only the tire with instructions to patch it.  I was instructed that they were very busy that day and that it would take at least an hour and possiblly an hour and a half for them to complete the job.  Patience.  "No problem", I said, "just call me when it's done."  I grabbed a sandwich and a coffee and headed for the dog park with my pup.  Three and a half hours later I decided it was time to go check and see how things were getting along, and I headed back to Walmart where I pulled up just in time to see the tech finish up with my tire.  I walked right in the door and waited in line behind one other gentleman purchasing a single battery, thinking that I could just get my tire and go.  Of course this was not the case, there was only one man working the tire counter, and he had, for some reason beyond my understanding, agreed to ring up the purchases of a woman who was attempting to skip the lines at the front register.  Two full carts worth.  The battery man and I stood in line and watched him take each item out of the carts, one at a time, and scan it by hand, for over an hour.  In the end he rang up nearly $500 in purchases and I rang up at least that much in patience points.  Naturally, the woman chose to pay with a check, and the process dragged on and on.

When I finally did reach the counter I was informed that even though I had seen the tech finish with my tire, the paperwork was not ready and I therefor could not be helped yet.  I informed him that I would be waiting in the parking lot, and that he should come get me when the paperwork is ready.  I took the tire on my way by and debated putting it back on right there in the parking lot, but decided to wait for the paperwork, just in case there were any further complications.  My patience paid off in this case, because the tech came over and explained the situation, and feeling badly, put the tire back on my truck for me, in a matter of minutes.  The tech and I headed inside, where he explained to the counter person that the reason my tire had taken so long was that it had been put in as the truck, not as a carry in, and when my turn came up in line they couldn't find my truck so they just moved on.  Hours later the tech noticed that my tire was sitting by the door and investigated, he found a key tag stuck to the tire matching the key tag for the missing truck and put it all together, at which point he promptly fixed my tire.  Since the original paperwork was incorrect (and presumably still lost somewhere in the abyss...) we went through the whole rigmarole of checking me in again, and then immediately back out, at which point I was allowed to sign the paper and leave.

By now it was nearly 6:00 pm and I still had an hour drive back to my field site, so I filled my tank, grabbed a cold drink, and hit the highway.  I managed to put in about 45 minutes worth of work when I got back and then made camp for the night.  I still had a day and a half in the field left to get some work done before I planned to head home for a break, so I figured I would at least get something worthwhile done this week.  The next day, of course, was listed as having a 20% chance of rain, so I don't know why I was surprised when a massive storm rolled in, stopping me in my tracks for nearly two hours of truck-shaking winds and bone-rattling thunder.  Peachy.

In the end, I was able to get nearly two and a half days of work out of the four that I spent out in the desert, but that is just how things go sometimes.  In this line of work there is literally nothing more important than patience, well, except maybe the perseverance (or in my case maybe stubbornness) that keeps me going back for more.  Patience though, can only take this process so far.  It is critical for me, during data collection, because of the inevitable difficulties that crop up; that being said though, to you I would still like to convey a sense of urgency.  The Red Desert has given me some of the greatest adventures of my life and taught me some of the most important lessons, but it is under attack.  Most of these areas are already heavily impacted long before I even get to them.  So far I have visited five protected wilderness study areas, areas enjoying the full protections offered by wilderness designation without formal congressional designation, and there was not a single one that did not already contain abandoned oil and gas infrastructure.  I have also been to eight citizen’s proposed wilderness areas, areas suggested by citizens and conservation groups as possessing wilderness characteristics, and in all of those I can name only one that was not bordered by, or containing, active oil and gas development.

I have come to love the very places that present these daily challenges, and it pains me to see the destruction left behind by the constant push of development.  This is not just my battle though, the BLM needs to hear from concerned citizens like you.  So please, if you love the desert, spread the word, because the best way to ensure it's protection is to show the BLM that people like you care.  This is public land, and you have a say.  For more information about the areas BCA hopes to protect or for ways that you can help, please contact me at shelby@voiceforthewild.org.

I'm on a Roll...

Evidently I am really hard on trucks.  I mean, I think it might have something to do with my job and the terrain on which I travel, but I can't help but feel partially responsible.  As you have probably guessed, I am back in Laramie, with a (once again) malfunctioning truck.  But let me back up, because last week I did go to the desert and was somehow able to stay out for the full 5 days as I had intended (despite the desert's best effort to break me down), and this week I did get a whole 2.5 worthwhile work days in...so at least I'm making progress, albeit in short and frustrating bursts.

So last week I left for the desert on Monday, got there late afternoon, and managed to put in several productive hours of happy and distraction-less inventorying.  I was feeling good, I was remembering everything I love about the desert, and I was really enjoying it.  It felt great, I had my positive energy back!  By day two my positivity was flagging, as I wrestled with a pounding headache in the 95 degree heat of the desert, shadeless and unforgiving.  I drank roughly 3,596 gallons of water, took a 10 minute power nap mid-day, and powered through, still somehow putting in a 12 hour day, but feeling decidedly less happy about the whole thing.

Day 3 proved a tad frustrating when a swiftly deteriorating supply of gas sent me out to town and then, because I was already down that way I tried to access the southern part of the unit and found first that an oil/gas road had been built on top of a portion of one route that I had hoped to use for access, causing the latter half to be difficult to access and therefor abandoned.  Then, a second effort landed me on the path of an old two-track that had also since been buried by a large constructed oil/gas route, but one that had been abandoned, and if you have ever done any traveling in the desert you know that these constructed roads do NOT age well.  After the first washed out and rocky hill I felt hesitant, but continued.  The second had me paying attention, and the third washout left me concerned that I might somehow get myself into a place that I would find I could not get out of.  Frustrated I paced around the truck, mulling over my options: Waste half a day driving back to the part of the unit I knew I could easily access, waste half a day hiking the remainder of this route to decide if traversing this washout would simply land me in the thick of several more, or wing it and risk getting stuck.  Just as I was stomping around proclaiming to the heavens that "this s#!t only happens to me", a wild horse happened by and my puppy exited the truck via a flying leap out the window and took off running through cacti and sage brush to see if it would be her friend.  Fortunately she's a smart dog, and she quickly realized that the retreating horse was not interested in her friendship, so she turned around and returned to the vehicle, not the least bit sorry for having ignored my angry screams for her to come back.  That was it, I loaded her into the truck, buckled her harness into the seat belt (she did not like this), and turned this whole mess around for territory that I knew would present far fewer challenges.

Day 4, opened with a long quiet walk, cool and pleasant just after sunrise.  On a winding road alternating through sand dunes and clay flats, I strolled along happily with my puppy.  A small threatening exchange took place with an offended wild horse, much to the confusion of non-horse-savvy puppy, but other than that the walk was pleasant and uneventful.  And so I naively thought perhaps the entire day would follow suit.  By 2:00 pm the wind had picked up to such an extent that attempting to take a photo with the I-pad became akin to resistance strength training and large, Audrey Hepburn style sunglasses were required just to keep my contacts from blowing out of my eyeballs.  I have no way of knowing, but I'm confident that these winds were in excess of 50 to 60 mph, as they were consistently rocking the entire pickup truck and opening the windward door became exceedingly challenging.  By the end of the day a great deal of dust had blown into and around everything that composed my entire view of the world, my teeth were gritty, my ears had small beaches in them, my hair was an absurd rat's nest of sand and dust, and my normally black dog was an awkward shade of khaki.  It was 5:00 pm; when in the field I usually try to work 6:30 to 6:30 and so I had an hour and a half to kill but had found myself at the mouth of a road leading into the WSA (Wilderness Study Area) where mechanized transport is forbidden, and I knew I had a walk of several hours to capture the entire road.  Rather than quit early I decided to inventory the road as far as the first spur route to a reservoir, and capture all of that so that tomorrow I would be able to race through the first part and start just beyond that spur.  After quickly stuffing water and maps, snacks and a compass into my pack I set out, puppy by my side, onto this two-track, and straight towards an ominous looking cloud.  Experience told me that this giant cloud would, despite it's best effort, drop only 10 or 12 raindrops on the desert floor, the rest evaporating in the insanely dry air before ever reaching the ground, so I felt confident in my choice to continue on.

Unfortunately experiences breeds confidence that some might describe as "false", and in this case that would be an accurate assessment.  Although I was correct in assuming that very little of the rain would reach the ground, I was incorrect in assuming that this would cause no problems for me.  You see, immediately preceding those 12 drops of rain was a wall of wind the likes of which I daresay I have never experienced on foot before, and carried along by that wall of wind were millions upon millions of grains of sand.  So literally the instant I reached the spur route that I had intended to hike I turned to see a dust storm reminiscent of those I encountered in Mauritania, headed my way.  I quickly turned and quite literally ran, full backpack on and dog leash in hand with a confused, frolicking, and tug-of-warring puppy on the other end, back the way I had come, hoping beyond hope that I would reach the truck before the sand reached me.  I didn't.  10 breathless, awkward, lumbering minutes later I dropped to my knees and wrapped myself over my doggies eyes as the stinging sand blasted the outer layers of skin off the backs of my legs.  To make matters worse, the winds barely slowed throughout the entire evening and picked up with a vengeance sometime after 11:00 pm, shaking the truck of side to side and generally destroying any hope I had of getting a good nights sleep.

The final day of this trip was uneventful, ended early, and I was back in Laramie by nightfall.  Thunderstorm warnings kept me from returning to Adobe Town this Monday morning, and my return Tuesday went well; I was even able to get in two full, uneventful days before disaster struck again.  This time I was camping somewhere near the center of the entire unit, but at the southern end of the WSA, generally speaking in the middle of nowhere, on a little eroded two-track route that was frequently buried in sand dunes.  In the morning I got up, fed my pup, and cooked my oatmeal all while still cocooned in my sleeping bag in the 40 degree desert morning.  When I finally felt ready to emerge and take on the day, I stalled out the truck.  Odd, I thought, I've been driving a standard since I was 17, shouldn't I be able to get the truck moving without stalling it out at this point in my life?  A second effort yielded the same result, and on the third I stamped the gas and completely let off the clutch immediately and rolled away without incident.  Now that I was moving I decided to investigate the clutch pedal, because that's apparently how my priorities worked out in my head: 1) get truck moving, and 2) now determine whats wrong with it.  Seems wise.

I found I had no tension in the clutch pedal anymore until the very last instant, and sometimes even with the clutch to the floor it continued to move.  If you knew me when I lived in Saint Thomas, then you know that I have experienced such issues before, only that time with our old jeep, aptly named the adventuremobile, and stuck in bumper to bumper cruise-ship-day-traffic.  So this time at least I didn't have seven safari trucks full of tourists on all sides to watch me shove the darn truck into gear with all I'm worth and quietly pray my way through every stop sign, at least there was that.  At any rate I was so far in, on a road I had already inventoried the far end of, and I really didn't want to have to drive it again.  So I parked the truck and went for what I thought would be a two hour but turned out to be more like a four hour long hike, to finish that road, all the roads coming off of it, and a reservoir smack dab in the middle of nowhere.  When I got back to the truck I locked in the hubs, and wrestled it around, and slow and steady, picked my way all the way back to a county road.  There I called my pops to talk me through adding some clutch (brake) fluid and carefully headed for the highway, and eventually home.

So here I am again, back earlier than I intended, heading back out later than intended, but Grimace the purple truck needs his R&R time too...so that's that.  And hey, at least it wasn't a tire, so I didn't have to go back to Walmart, which I don't think my delicate psyche could have taken at this point.

If you are reading this and thinking "man, somebody should get that girl a better truck!" then I urge you to go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation, and feel free to send us an email requesting that the money be spent on fixing up poor old Grimace.  Alternatively, you may call any wealthy friends that you may have and ask them nicely if they'd like to buy me a new truck.  You also might be thinking, "man, that girl kills trucks, I would never hire her to do anything ever because she just destroys everything she touches" but I assure you that I asked a reputable source and I am under the understanding that there is no way the slave cylinder could have been caused to leak by my driving, and it's more likely that it was a re-manufactured part that was faulty and failed well before it should have, regardless of how it was driven.  So if you feel that way you should still go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation and let them know that you know I'm not a truck killer, at least not on purpose...

Here, I'll even give you the link!  Because I'm so thoughtful!  http://www.voiceforthewild.org/page.php?id=donate#.UcTlQ_ksmys

Wild Horses

Wilderness Doggy

That's some strong dirt!

Adobe Town

Adobe Town

Sunset Road

DUST STORM!

Ominous cloud...

Adobe Town

My Faithful friends

Sunset

DUST STORM!

Adobe Town Valley

On taking the FE and the importance of dog noses...

Big news:  My test, the massive, lengthy exam that has eaten up most of my free time for the better part of 2 months, for which I had to re-learn everything I learned in school 4 to 8 years ago and more, is now, as of Saturday, over and done!  This is fantastic!  Fabulous!  Wonderful!  This is freedom!  This is a little nerve-racking because I won't find out my score for up to 12 weeks, but at least it means the practice problems, review books, note-taking, and cramming is over for now; hopefully that means the math problem themed dreams will end too.  For the past week or so, I have spent my nights restlessly solving plume-dispersion equations, anaerobic digestor, and secondary clarifier problems in my sleep.  The night after my test I dreamt of struggling to solve questions that had been on the actual exam, and last night I dreamt of studying on some strange campus full of people that took the exam with me.

Last night was the most distressing dream of them all, because I was walking at night to a place to study and a friends dog had followed me.  In the dream the dog belonged to a friend that I knew, but don't know well in real life anymore.  While we were walking I kept trying to get the dog to go home, but she kept following me.  Just as we rounded a corner, a very big and angry looking dog came into view.  I tried to get my friends dog to come in another direction, but I was unsuccessful and the two dogs began to fight.  I was screaming and no one was around to help me, and right before my eyes the bigger street dog bit the nose off of my friends dog.  Now I don't just mean the little button nose on the end of a dog's snout, this dog removed the entire snout of my friend's dog.  I was screaming and crying and trying to get someone to help me, and people were just walking by, no one stopped to help.

That was a traumatizing dream, consequently I have spent almost the entirety of this beautiful (85 degrees...in April!) day worshiping my dog's intact nose.  I took her for a hike and watched her nose blow bubbles under water, watched it snuffle around in the leaves, and test the breeze for the scent of something to chase.  We brought a blanket outside and laid in the sunshine, she wiped her nose on my skirt and growled at some menacing leaves, and I just watched and appreciated her noggin in the sunshine.  It was a great day...and this is a great schnoz...

weeeeekend

What a looong crazy weekend!  This is how my weekend went:

Friday:  I opted just to relax and slept in, went to the beach, and then played silly games with silly friends for the evening...as for my photo of the day?  I totally and completely forgot for one entire day to take a single picture...oops!

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Saturday: This was the Great Sierra River Clean-Up - an event that the South Lake area AmeriCorps volunteers partnered with Clean Tahoe, South Tahoe Refuse. Cal Trout, and a bunch of other great area organizations to put on.  We hosted clean-ups on 14 river and lake sites in South Lake and has a turnout of nearly 200 volunteers who collected over 2300 pounds of trash!  Hurray for clean and healthy beaches and streams!

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Sunday:  After the clean-up on Saturday I picked up my stuff and left on ,my first ever wilderness back-packing overnight with a friend of mine in desolation wilderness.  We hiked out to Ralston Lake from Echo Lakes on Saturday evening, made a warm dinner of soup and tortillas with cheese and then curled up in our sleeping bags for a night under the nearly full moon.  This morning we had a leisurely breakfast and then took off climbing up Ralston Peak from the lake.  Our route zig-zagged up the face of the mountain, over huge scree fields and through the little stream breaks then up the ridge line to the trail to the summit.  

Taken Saturday on the hike in, the sun is setting over Echo Lakes

Sunrise from camp

Ralston Peak...we climbed right up what you're looking at.

Scree Field!

View from the top

I made it!

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day of rest

today was my whole weekend, and man did i need it!  I slept in (all the way until 8:30!) and then I took a little walk to see if I could see the snow (rumors told me that it should be not far up in the mountains).  This is what I saw:

But then later, when I went back out I saw the snowww!  Yep, thats right, snow.  In August.  Ick.  And here it is below, up on the mountain!

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minor setback

I inadvertently left my camera in a friends bag for a few days...but now its catch up time...and yes, I did actually take a photo each day for the ones that i've missed.

Thursday:

The meadow by my house, on my evening walk

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Friday:

Mt. Tallac as soon from a sailboat in the middle of the lake!

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Today:

Motley...(too hot for his socks)

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Rubicon Trail

I forgot to post a photo yesterday, but I hiked a hike today that was so sooo beautiful that I think two from today is better then some old stinky yesterday picture anyway.

We hiked the Rubicon Trail today, which extends from Rubicon Point in D. L. Bliss State Park all the way into Emerald Bay, to Vikingsholm, and then back out the other side to Eagle Point Camp Ground.  It was about a 6.5 mile hike, of mostly flat and easy terrain.  We took a looong lunch down by the water in an area that was sandy for about 15 feet and then abruptly drops off about 1000 more after a certain point, which was very neat. We called it the abyss and were absolutely terrified of what lay beyond it...all the treasures and terrors floating around in the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

Then last view of the lake on the hike, right before we hit Eagle Point Campground.  

A crooked, self-timer shot of Reyna and I at the beginning of the 

hike, at one of the first look out points.  

A lighthouse at the very beginning of the trail, built in 1919, this was once upon

 a time the highest elevation lighthouse on a navigable body of water in the entire world!

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pinecone

pine cone is code for i spent all day in the office and didn't get to take a picture until my evening walk around the neighborhood...so i took a picture of a pine cone.  I know, its a long and obscure code, but it is what it is...what can ya do about it?

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working hard..

I hug trees.  Especially 100 year old incense cedars.

I found this guy today...its a Misumena Vatia I think; they can change colors to light yellow and dark yellow depending on the surface they're on.  This guy was on a Tiger Lilly, so he was bright!

Wildflowers!  I can't identify these, but they're perrty!  

A beautiful doe stopped by to say hello too!

This is my job.  I walk around in the woods and make sure streams are healthy.  Then I try to ID flowers and bugs for fun!  

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Aloha!

Today we hiked from Echo Summit trailhead to Lake Aloha in the Desolation Wilderness and back, around trip total of about 10 miles.  Aloha is beautiful and I recommend the hike to anyone; coming in from this trailhead is not only beautiful but also less strenuous then the Glen Alpine trailhead and MUCH more beautiful, skirting Upper and Lower Echo lakes for the first 3 or so miles.  We did hit some bits of rain and passing thunderstorms on the way out as well as the way out, but magically, the sky cleared up when we got to the lake and the sun shined for our fabulous swim in those blue waters.  The best part: swimming in Aloha, for sure.  The worst part: the aptly named "mosquito valley," a shaded and moist area where you will be snacked upon by dozens of mosquitoes!

Looking back at Upper and Lower Echo Lakes

The beautiful Lake Aloha, yes there is still snow at this elevation, no it did not keep us from swimming.

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ponies

when walking the dogs this evening we found these beautiful ponies out in the meadow.  This is my super grainy. super high ISO attempt at getting a shot of them under the (almost) full moon.

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long day!

I'm sorry, I forgot.  I didn't send the flower photo to myself but PERHAPS I will remember tomorrow!  To be fair, of the 10 and a half hours I worked today, I spent only about 45 minutes of it in the office.  All the rest was out "in the field" as we like to call it.  I spent the day mapping trails on a CTC parcel and working on estimations of volume of fill needed to repair a badly eroding trail.  The bright side:  the trails led to the top of a rock overlooking the lake that was downright gorgeous.  The down side:  I probably hiked the equivalent of climbing that rock 4 times in my efforts to GPS all of the trails on this particular property.  Anyway, because I have forgotten again to get a hold of yesterdays picture, today you get a bonus picture; because 2 is better than 1.  Here are TWO lovely photos from my day, taken from the top of Eagle Rock overlooking Lake Tahoe.

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Suzy Lake

This morning Reyna and I hiked up to Suzy Lake in the Desolation Wilderness.  It was a beautiful hike to a beautiful lake that was a lot more secluded than Lake Tahoe.  The best part?  We packed in Reyna's inflatable raft and small hand pump and floated around in the lake on a little boat!

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focus on ferns

Today I went on the American River Conservancy's "Focus on Ferns" benefit walk.  I learned a LOT about ferns in the area, not to mention trees, mushrooms, flowers, and newts.  We hiked about 2 miles in, to a beautiful waterfall, where we sat and had lunch and then headed back up the hill.  It was an amazing day for it, perfect weather with blues skies and sunshine but not toooo hot; it was great.  Here is my fern/photo of the day:

This is a Goldback Fern, so named for the "gold" colored dusty spores it forms on the back of the leaves,  If you press it to your pant leg it will leave a print of its shape in gold powder.  

ps. I made a cheesecake today, but its for tomorrow, so perhaps a picture tomorrow...possibly even a recipe if i like it.

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dogs make everything better

i had a rough day, its a long story, but by the end of it i just needed a walk, some time to stare at the sky, and just evaluate what just happened.  it was 75 degrees today, sunny and beautiful, and somehow a dark cloud just hung over my little corner of this normally wonderful town.  I grabbed my sketchbook, my camera, and i decided to take a walk to do some thinking.  I ended up bringing along a friend, and her sunny attitude brightened my own.  Here is a photo of the smiling Bailey, who brought a little sunshine back into my life on a pretty dark day.

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sorry stowe...lake placid still wins

taken out of a moving vehicle...and still gorgeous.

this one was an accident...just a random snap before we went into the trees and lost the view, but i think its lovely.

life is a winding road.

especially mine.

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