We put our first 585 miles behind us today: the big state of Nebraska. Sorry, folks, but talk about boring scenery! When we finally met up with the Platte River the scenery got better. It’s so brown and dry. I guess I am too acclimated to the East Coast! Please don’t take offense.

We are staying in the Days Inn with which we have a long history. My first stay here was on a trip by myself, with Sailor, on the way to breed him in Minnesota. It was pouring rain with black clouds and dark as night when we pulled in. I was hoping and praying that they took pets. They did. I walked him in the pouring rain, thunder, and lightening when we first arrived. When we came back in the desk clerk told me to gather in the downstairs hallway because there was a tornado warning. Geez. Since then we have stayed here on two previous trips to Colorado (on the way back). This marks our third stay. (Or fourth if you count the one with Sailor.)  The kitties like the room because the ground floor level rooms are slightly below ground with a lovely window sill for them to sit on and look out on the world.

Tomorrow’s goal will be to get through Iowa, Illinois, and hopefully all of Indiana, staying just 13 miles in to Ohio. We’ll see if we make it that far. If not, our Ramada Inn in Elkhart, Indiana will have to suffice. They seem to have gone downhill in the past few years and given that the no longer have the Bennigan’s Restaurant attached, it’s not as attractive. And may be the reason for the decline of the whole hotel. But, at this time of year it’s pretty much empty and a good place to walk the dogs.

We are anxious to be home now that we’ve started our return journey. Leaving the cabin this morning and hearing the last bits of water spitting out of the pipes as we drained them seemed so final. As did the closing and locking of the gate.

As I type we’ve had our meal of Hardee’s hamburgers (close by the hotel), and several glasses of good red wine. Rick is busy with his iPad and I got the computer. Bella is asleep at my feet, Hailey and Sam are asleep on one of the beds, eBay is curled up on the pillows of the other bed (on top of the sheet we bring to put on the beds), and Alex is crashed behind Rick. They will need to go out once more for potty time before we can turn in and turn out the lights on this first day of travel.

Before I go I have to say I saw one of the most pitiful sights in my life today which rates right up there with an experience I had as a teen driving from Florida to Colorado with my parents. We had stopped in Amarillo Texas and I saw a truck with an open semi trailer of dead, bloated cattle with their stiff feet all sticking up in the air. It has never left my mind.  Neither will the sight I saw today for the first time: a poultry truck. Beautiful white chickens were all stuffed into crates on top of one another. Crate upon crate. Feathers flying out behind the truck. When we passed I could see their sad eyes staring at me although it was impossible for them to move even a feather. So sad. That image will stick with me for a while. For sure.

So, sorry for that memory, but I wanted to remember it. Off to walk the dogs for final pees now and on to tomorrow’s trek.

Thank you all for sticking with me on our vacation. I’m sorry I haven’t been around to any of your own blogs, but I promise to catch up once we’re back.

‘Night.

Just in case any of you out there were wondering exactly where our cabin is, “X” marks the spot!

The driveway.

It’s hard to believe that we only have three days left at the cabin. Three days. Where did the time go? The days slip by in a sunny blur. Yesterday our weather station here at the cabin registered 83 degrees F! Crazy. We are unsure yet of how to best spend the remaining time here. Do we take another drive? Walk the perimeter of our 70 acres? Or just be lazy and sit around and read (and blog)?

We’ve done a few chore-like things but not much. We have to fix our fence at the entrance to our cabin every year because the snow piles up so deep that the fence poles (which are just trees that have died and fallen over) don’t hold up very well. Rick took the big chain saw and cut through downed trees on our path through the woods and replaced the threshold on our front screen door. That’s about it for work.

Part of the fence.

The other night we finally got lucky and caught a herd of cow elk just over the hill from the cabin. They were spooky and didn’t hold still for long. Still, it was nice to see them.

The cows continue to stroll through our newly formed “meadow” leaving lots of meadow muffins. behind. Like this:

Yesterday they just laid down and took a long afternoon nap. We forgot they were there and when Rick went out with the dogs after their meal Hailey took off chasing them. argh! I didn’t see it because I was inside, but from hearing Rick yelling at her I knew something was happening. She chased them out of the woods, across the road and over the hill, then she came back. She thinks she’s a cow dog now and is very pleased with herself.  Here they are at our salt lick (which we have to attract the moose, not cows) yesterday morning.

eBay likes it when the cows are here too. She looks out the window frozen into position and her whole body just quivers. I don’t know if she’s quivering with excitement or fear, but it’s amusement anyway. Speaking of eBay, she’s got her nose out of joint because I haven’t shown any photos of her, so here she is doing her favorite thing at the cabin—rolling around in the gravelly dirt in the driveway and taking a dirt bath.

We took a drive yesterday over Sand Creek Pass and down to the Laramie River road and on to Woods Landing, taking the extremely long way into Laramie. This stand of aspens were too pretty to pass up without capturing them.

One thing that Colorado and Wyoming have over New Jersey it that blue, blue sky that goes on forever. And, of course, signs like this one.

And folks, it’s no bull!

Uhm, but in this case it was a bull!

After errands in Laramie we came home and I made lasagna for dinner. We had neighbors David and Sal over. We took them on our “around” walk before dinner and they were completely amazed at all the trees we have. Bella took a late afternoon dip in the pond. I liked the ripples fanning out from her and the reflection of the tree that goes right through her middle!

I have so many photos to share I think I might do another blog entry later today, so stay tuned to the cabin channel!

Oops, almost forgot to include an aspen pic!

We arrived at the cabin around 2:30 yesterday afternoon after a brief and somewhat frustrating grocery shopping expedition at the Laramie Safeway. It’s much warmer here than we would expect it to be in mid-September and the aspens have just started to change.

We were somewhat apprehensive about seeing the land surrounding our cabin since it would be the first time since we had around 200 beetle-killed trees removed in March of this year. It looks odd to our eyes and not the view we expect to see when we look out the window, but we think it’s a good kind of odd. Right now it’s a bit of a mess since they removed the trees while there was still quite a bit of snow on the ground to allow them to burn slash piles, and there are tree stumps higher than they should be and lots and lots of slash left.  But it has opened up our view and we can see the sunset now where before we had too many trees to see it. We can even see the silhouette of Bull Mountain through the remaining trees! I

I’m not sure if there is a photo of what it used to look like on Rick’s computer, but I’ll see if I can find one, then take a picture of what it looks like now.

We didn’t do much yesterday, just unpacked and tried to settle in after our long drive. We took a few short walks with the dogs and they seemed right at home. The cats knew where they were too and took up their old habits, such as eBay escaping outside without us knowing about it. Rick found her happily exploring under the picnic table. We will have to be more careful when letting the dogs in and out.

Here is a photo of the sunset on our walk last night; Bull Mountain is the backdrop.

We were a little worried about our steller jay population since their habitat are the big pines that we removed so many of. This morning when I opened the curtains there was a steller jay sitting in the tree as if it to say, “well, where are my peanuts?” I was very glad to see him. After I put some bird food out four of them arrived to feast on peanuts. They seem to be holding their own. I also saw a lot of flickers which I don’t remember having so many of.

This morning on our walk Bella couldn’t wait to get back into the pond for a swim. She certainly remembered that from last year! She splashed around a good bit, then would come out and shake off only to go right back in again. Our not-so-little water dog!

That’s the update for now!

Two hard days on the road of 10+ hours each day have landed us in one of our favorite hotels on the trek westward that we stumbled across last year: The Rodeway Inn in Grand Island, Nebraska. The trip so far has been uneventful (unless you count Sam throwing up in his crate on Day 1) and basically easy. The most traffic we’ve encountered was in Illinois. Plus, there is only one rest stop, and a really great one for dogs at that, but it was closed. Boo on Illinois!

Lots of trucks, which I hate. Especially when they swerve around in their lane into mine and then you are not really eager to pass them. I’ve thought of a way to entertain myself while Rick drives and that is make a bunch of placards which would basically grade their driving skills and hold it up to show them as we pass. Things like “stop texting!” “you’re doing a great job of driving” “don’t do that again,” etc. You get the idea. They might even get a kick out of it if I’m careful not to tick them off. What do you think? Of course if they are busy texting they won’t be reading my placards! We saw some people in cars reading maps, books and what looked like actually doing work with bunches of paper flying all over the place. What are people thinking do all those things as they hurtle down the interstate at 70 mph?

We were walking the dogs in the dark last night when I thought I saw a cat by the dumpster. I said something to Rick about “watch Bella because there’s a cat over there” when I saw another furry creature come tumbling out of the dumpster. Oops. Not a cat, and neither was the first one. Raccoons! Have you seen that commercial on TV advertising eyeglasses where the woman calls “here kitty kitty, come snuggle with mommy” and she lets a raccoon inside the house instead of “kitty”? That was the first thing that popped into my mind.

We’re about to order in Dominos’ to our room. This time we’ll try and call the Domino’s in Grand Island instead of the one in Kearney like we did last year. oops! Some guys right outside my window with a lake view are going to take advantage of the BBQ facilities lakeside and grill some burgers or hot dogs. The weather is lovely this year instead of the pouring rain like last year.

Anyway, I am rambling because I haven’t slept well for two night now and am very road weary. I’ve read this over but I am so tired I can’t tell if I made any sense or not. So, I am going to close for now and help Rick decide what we need grocery-wise for the next four days or so at the cabin. Please forgive my errors or lack of sense-making!

Next stop: the cabin!

Preparations will reach a frenzied peak today as we get ready to leave tomorrow on our big road trip West.

The dogs have been groomed, so they are clean and smell good. I had them booked in at their groomer for yesterday but she called me on Sunday to say that she was very sick with some kind of flu and couldn’t do them. OH NO! Instead of waiting until Monday to call around to see if I could find someone else to groom them, Rick and I pooled our efforts and bathed and blew-dried them all on Sunday afternoon. Of course they are all shedding like crazy. What a mess. But, it’s done.

The fig tree was supposed to go over to my neighbor’s yesterday around early evening but we had a pretty good thunderstorm, so that got delayed until later today. It needs watering every day so Aileen has agreed to care for it. It will stand in her flower bed and should be pretty happy over there.

The dogs know something is up. They were ready to go on Sunday when we cleaned out the Suburban and put their crates in it. At least Alex knows what is coming I think. They are barky and jumpy and they are driving me nuts. The cats will try to hide in the morning and we’ll have to find them, but we know all of eBay’s hiding places and Sam is just too darned big to hide.

Rick caught the cold bug that I had over the weekend and isn’t feeling the greatest. Nothing horrible, just sinus headache and stuffy head, sore throat. It only lasted 48 hours with me, so hopefully he’ll be feeling pretty good tomorrow. I hope so since he is the main driver!

The pool was closed yesterday. Sad, but it was time. Now we don’t have to worry about running the robot all the time just to get up the acorns that have made their way to the bottom. It has its nice cozy winter cover on which should act more like a trampoline for the acorns ... boing!

Mostly I am feeling ready and organized but I know I will have last minute packing anxiety. Not that clothes are hard to figure out at the cabin—nothing fancy required! And no dressing up to go into town either. After all, it is just Laramie.

I will probably blog from the cabin if anyone is interested ...

Bella and Sam ... watching ... waiting ...