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

I’m writing tonight as our last night here at the cabin. I’ve posted several blog entries today, so if you are interested, please read backward a bit to see them all. I guess I felt the need to catch up a bit more before we left.

This morning we took our coffee and walked down to Serenity Point (as we’ve named it.)




Note to self: Next time I want/need to enjoy some serenity, leave the dogs behind in the cabin.

We are as ready and packed as we can get tonight. We just made the last walk with the dogs down to the bottom and back. They all know that we are leaving tomorrow as they’ve watched the progress of packing up all day long. I would like to think that they are as ready as we are.

The hummingbirds are not happy with us as we just now took down the feeders. They are in a frenzy of sugar withdrawal. I feel bad for them.

I emptied the bird feeders and along with it, all the junk food that we did not eat. So, the beasties will be feeding on Cheez Doodles (better known as Cheeze Do-dos) and stale potato chips and Chex cereal.

I have to say that given the extreme fire danger here, I took some extra photos of the cabin in case I might not see it standing again. Don’t ever take anything for granted. Not in this wild country.

If not this fire that continues to chew away at all the beetle kill, another one might take it. You just don’t know.

Our time here was good. But we are ready to resume our normal lives again and pick the threads of our lives back up again on the other side of the country.

We’ll see you on the flip side! Thanks so much for joining us on our journey west. I hope you enjoyed your vacation!

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

And adorable! We have a huge population of both ground squirrels and their littler cousins, chipmunks.




They are pretty smart about gaining access to the two bird feeders we have out. This year every time I look out expecting to see birds in the feeders I see ground squirrels or chipmunks instead.

Amazingly, they can climb this pole!

Getting up is one thing, but getting down is not as easy as it would seem.




Our other bird feeder is surrounded by baby aspens. Since it’s impossible for them to climb up the pole and get into this feeder, they’ve learned to climb the little trees and take a flying leap! Rick finally got this in slow motion yesterday and here is the clip. Enjoy!

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

I’ve shown you Chimney rock earlier on in my cabin posts, right? It’s that strange rock formation that you can’t miss driving to the cabin. It has a large ranch named after it, and all those strange looking rock formations I showed you are all on the ranch.

Seen from the normal angle of the road that goes past it, Chimney Rock does look like a tall chimney and it’s pretty easy to see how it got its name.




But ... it is also known by the name of Camel Rock to some people. Those people look at this landmark from a different angle and they see a camel.



Funny looking, huh? Do you see a camel? I used to think it looked more like a turtle with a big shell.

And here is another view of that old homestead as seen from “Camel” Rock. The homestead is dwarfed by the cliffs behind it.




On another note, my camera is acting up. My new camera. All the photos you see above have been doctored to edit out an annoying UFO blip that just started showing up. Take a look:




It appears to be on the sensor and there is no way to clean it. Sigh. I have no idea where it came from! So, when we get back I will take my camera back in to Best Buy and just have them give me a new one instead of repairing this one under warranty. It’s very frustrating!

I hope to post at least once more today and maybe twice, so stay tuned!


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