Whew. Summer arrived right on time. The past two days have been in the 90’s with high humidity, taking the heat index right over 100 degrees! It’s good for the pool (which was opened last week right before we got back) since it needs to come up a bit in temperature, but it’s not good for much else. I need to get some more weeding done but it’s too muggy out there for me.

The ferns are going crazy.

The bee balm is starting to bloom.

And the day lilies poolside are blooming too.

Last night after dinner Rick couldn’t stand looking at the pool any longer and he had the first swim of the season. 77 degrees isn’t too bad for the water temperature, but it’s still pretty chilly. I watched and cheered him on from the sidelines.

Bella was out with us as usual but Alex and Hailey preferred to stay in the air conditioned house. Can’t blame them.

Rick had just gotten out of the water when I heard a noise and Bella took off down into the yard and into the woods barking. Uh oh. I know what that kind of bark means. I ran to see what it was and saw a bear climbing up a tree. We grabbed Bella and bless her heart she listened and came with us.

I walked back down to the edge of the yard to take a closer look. I’ve learned over the years we’ve lived here to look up, way up in the tree. Sure enough, this bear had three cubs with her! I was so excited I was jumping up and down with joy! This is the first time in two years since they initiated the bear hunt again that we’ve had a momma bear! So great to see her and the cubbies!

It was getting dark so trying to get photos was challenging. This was the best I could do.

The three little monkeys!

Pretty momma!

Another one of the three cubs. I love the little guy sitting astride in the crook of the branch! They are so darling when they’re little. Three cubs is quite a lot. Two is pretty normal, but nothing like Fertile Myrtle’s Five. Do you remember them? Here’s a link to a video of them.

Here’s a pic so you can see how far apart the cubs were from the mother bear.

She was inside the perimeter of our fence which means the cubs had to crawl over it. We have several low spots in the fence from the bears climbing over so it’s not a big surprise. Still, it’s always a little unnerving to have them in your yard!

I don’t know if she’ll be back after all the ruckus or not. She didn’t seem too worried. I’m just so excited to have bears again. They are such interesting animals.

Yesterday as I dragged the recycle up the driveway to the curb I noticed something in the other part of the driveway right in front of the door. From a distance I couldn’t see what it was. Maybe a pile of bear poo? Whatever it was was in the shadows and kind of circular which led me to guess the bear had left a present.

No! It was this guy.

I have only seen one other turtle here and that was the first year we lived here. I have no idea where he came from on this fine hot and humid morning.

Look at the beautiful pattern on his shell. I looked him up and came up with Eastern Box Turtle as the type of turtle he is.

He was not too sure about me and was giving me the old turtle “stink eye.” Plus, you think he could have at least finished finished chewing his leafy breakfast!

I took quite a few photos of him and since he was so nervous about me I left him to go about his business whatever it was. I wouldn’t mind if he decided to come back again.

P.S. I picked up my new “new” camera two days ago and am still trying to get used to the differences between it and my old camera. There are quite a few new features!

I see many differences between where I am now and where I’ve been. No, I’m not getting philosophical on you, I mean literally, not figuratively.

Sometimes though I might think a little too deeply. Like how it’s weird that while I am living somewhere else, live goes on without me where I used to live. Two different timelines that converge once in a while. I’m not sure if I can even properly explain it. For any one who has traveled a great deal I think you will know what I am saying. It boggles my mind to think about of all the people you pass while crossing the country, people just like you, are going about their daily lives and you know nothing about it or them.

Okay, on with what I really sat down to write about.

Let’s start with what I am doing right now. Huge computer screen and a mouse. Something I have done without for three weeks. I am used to blogging, getting email and virtually living through my iPad2. Pretty amazing really. All my photos were captured through it too. All 1,565 of them. It took me a bit to get used to such a large screen when I first booted the computer up last night. Even now I almost long to go back and blog from the iPad. It seemed cozier somehow. Easier.

Carrying right along with that thought process is where I am blogging from. At the cabin my blogging place/desk was the counter-high table at the cabin in front of the large windows that looks out onto our newly cleared space. From that viewpoint I saw the remaining beetle kill pines, slash piles from the clearing process, chipmunks and ground squirrels running across a few of the trees that fell over during the winter, using it as their super highway, and in the distance was the outline of Bull Mountain.

Now my view (if I turn around from the computer) consists of green, green and more green in the nature of our hedge in front of the house, the big old oak tree and the expanse of green lawn that peeks through now and then from the other green chaos. My computer desk is piled with various stuff. At the cabin we are so pared down that now all this “stuff” seems excessive. Sorry, no pics; no camera. Just picture it in your mind.

Different bird song.

Silent hummingbirds vs the broad-tailed at the cabin which make a busy whirring noise with their wings.

Trees and limited views as opposed to sage and open vistas.

Two-lane tree-lined winding and twisting roads vs straight, wide roads sans trees. (I have no clue why Colorado has such wide roads and the speed limits are so low.)

67% humidity vs 10%.

Fireflies in the grass. They don’t exist past a line somewhere around the mid-West.

Triple the living space.

A dishwasher instead of the dishwasher being Rick or me or both.

Automatic coffee maker instead of putting my mom’s old Corningware percolator on the burner and remembering to turn the gas down once it barely starts to perk.

Lush ferns vs dried grass and sage. (Again, no pic but you would not believe the fern growth since we were gone!)

King bed vs Queen bed. (Ahhhhhh)

Possibly a new bear vs deer and moose. (Yes, according to neighbor Kim we have a bear again. I thought as much since my hummingbird feeder was taken down with a few claw marks on the deck railing before we left.) Please bear don’t come around until I have a camera again!

A grocery store within 10 minutes instead of 45 minutes.

I’m sure there are more, but for now that’s all that I can think of.

It is more of an adjustment after three weeks than you would think!

We are HOME.

THANK GOD.

Cats had diarrhea again. Well, okay, Sam did and eBay thought about it. Just shy of the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border. I mean, really?  What goes on in the minds of cats? Frankly I am not about to find out ever again. Next year the cats stay home. Granted, we think Sam is really sick and not just the minor bug they at first thought was going on with him. I am never going to have another gross-clean-up-the-cat (this time while the vehicle is in motion) again. NO. Not happening.

We get home to our normally quiet street and what is going on but two parties with cars lining our normally quiet cul-de-sac. One house has never been occupied (except for holidays) with the people who normally live now in Las Vegas, is now alive with screaming party goers!

On the heels of living literally within miles of our nearest neighbors, this is a rude thing.

We are going to try and go to bed and sleep now which we desperately need. Screw the neighborhood at this point. Sorry, folks, for being so graphic but after three hard days on the road, I am ready to give up.

P.S. Last night in the hotel was blissful: no thunderstorm, no hallway noise, no cat noise. Finally a good night’s sleep. Tonight? No so sure.

Warning: somewhat graphic detail of the the day today towards the end of this post. You may not want to read any further.

Well, we almost made it out of Indiana today. We’re close. We normally stay just over the border in Ohio around Bryan at a Ramada Inn that we’ve stayed in two years in a row but they did not have any pet rooms available tonight. Something about a “big group” coming in tonight. Maybe there’s a dog show around. Don’t know.

So we opted for the Ramada Inn in Angola, Indiana that we stayed at three years ago. It’s off the highway a bit, and even more so now as the road is closed and we had to detour six miles out of the way, and six more miles back. But, we’re here, the outdoor dog walking space is incredible and the room is nice and hopefully quieter than last night. Domino’s just delivered our Honolulu Hawaiian pizza to our room and we devoured it. YUM.

But what a night last night and what a day today.

That thunderstorm I talked about last night? Well, it was one seemingly continuous thunderstorm/s from 7:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. Every time I drifted off to sleep I was awakened by loud claps of thunder. Or by the rude people at the ice machine one door down from us. And the subsequent banging shut of their door. Rude.

And how about that stupid train? Twice it went by, blaring its horn. One time was not enough. It sounded like it was right next to the hotel (which we kind of noticed before but not like it sounded from the freakin third floor where we ended up).

Toss into that nightmare mix a cat who continually has to use the litter box and scratch the newspapers that I use around it and you have a pretty much sleepless night. I finally got up at 2:30 and tossed him in the crate (Sam) and put his crate in the bathroom and closed the door most of the way so I couldn’t hear him trying to get out of said crate.

Fast forward to a late start this morning by one hour (due to sleeping a bit later from lack of sleep from all the above), toss in the stop at the Best Buy in Coralville, Iowa to exchange my camera.

Which I decided not to do (exchange it that is but instead returned it for a refund). Why? We noticed that my camera that we had purchased two weeks ago was being sold for a reduced price from what we had paid for it. The helpful sales person told us that it was because Canon was releasing the newest version of the same camera in a few days. Since it featured a new auto-focus feature I opted to just return my new camera and get the newest Canon after we get home.

That took a good 45 minutes (combined with lunch at the Culver’s ... again YUM) out of the scheduled driving time.

Then once we were back on the road for about ten minutes, eBay decided to have diarrhea in her crate, so we pulled off. Again. While Rick was in the quick mart store at the gas station we had pulled off in to get some wipes after getting eBay cleaned up and settled back in to her crate, Sam had to join in the on the diarrhea in his crate.

At this point I swore the cats would stay home next year. Actually, I swore quite a lot.

One hour and 45 minutes now behind our usual time.

Chicago basically sucks. It took us two hours today in stop and go traffic when it normally takes 45 minutes to an hour to get through it. The temperature was 95 degrees. Thank God for air conditioning and the great truck that Big Red is.

Then as you know, we had to detour to get to this hotel.

We are glad to be settled and hopefully not thunder, people banging doors and getting ice at all hours, nor cats scratching in the cat litter box will keep us awake tonight.

I can’t tell you how glad I will be to be home. In my own house. In my own bed.

Good night from Angola (a really cute town as we learned from our detour through main street).

Tomorrow: Home Sweet Home!

(Apologizing in advance for any typos as I am so tired I can hardly see straight. It was so bizarre I had to write it down.) Sorry!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad at the cabin 8,650 feet above sea level

Location:N 400 E,LaGrange,United States