I liked the shadow of the little leaf behind the big one. I just love the shape of aspen leaves!

We are settling into cabin mode slowly but surely. We get up, have some coffee and a bite of breakfast and then take the dogs for a walk. It’s been very windy for the past two days and unseasonably warm. You can tell how windy it is by looking at the dog’s fur blowing in the next few pictures.

Here is Bella posing prettily in front of Bull Mountain.

And Bella and Alex.

Hailey wanted her picture in the blog too.

Some of the aspens are really turning like this little grove on our property, but others haven’t even started yet.

I managed to find a photo we took last year to show how it looked before the tree removal took place. Here is the “before” photo followed by the “after” photo.

And here is what it looks like from inside the cabin looking out.

We can now see birds flying through the clearing. This prairie falcon visited this morning. It kept heckling the steller jays and swooping around the bird feeding station. We are not sure what it was up to but perhaps it views the newly opened space as its hunting ground and was not used to the jays being around it. He was beautiful to watch and kept us entertained for a good 45 minutes.

Our dear friend Linda drove all the way up from Denver yesterday to visit. It was wonderful to see her again. She is Alex’s breeder, and the minute she stepped out of her car he knew who she was even though he has not seen her for five years. It was so sweet to watch them get reacquainted. We talked and talked, drank wine (maybe a bit too much), and went on a few walks. She got to see Bella’s water dog act in action.

Her stay was short and after a long walk with the dogs this morning, she left to make the 3 hour drive home.

As I type the wind is whipping around the cabin in very strong gusts. I think the sound of the wind could drive a person crazy if it went on for very long. Hopefully it will stop tomorrow! It’s not very pleasant to be outside even though the temperature is 75 degrees F.

Tomorrow we will need to go into Laramie for more groceries since we only bought enough to get us through today. Maybe this time we’ll try shopping at the super Walmart instead of the Safeway even though I don’t like shopping at Walmart for groceries all that much. But, we don’t have a whole lot of choice!

I’ll leave you with this photo that I took this morning of this strange cloud that was hanging over the cabin.

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 ...

Has it really been one whole week since I last blogged? It doesn’t seem that long. I guess I have some catching up to do. It’s going to be a long one, so please bear with me as I wade through the goings-on of the past week +.

We had a good Labor Day weekend and the weather was glorious. We didn’t do much of anything, just some yard work such as emptying the deck flower boxes of their past-their-prime petunias, one of the signs of a winding down of summer.

The petunias may have been done with in the flower boxes but they managed to seat themselves in various places, such as the potted palm that has been spending the summer outside

and also poolside.

The weather has taken a turn since my last post. Nights are cooler and every day we have less sunlight. The sun has a hard time getting above the trees for the better part of the day. The pool deck is covered with bits and pieces of acorns that continually drop from the big oak tree at the far corner, making loud thonks! whenever they hit. Fall is in the air.

Earl completely missed us and all we got was a bit of wind on Saturday. Since he passed by our weather has been just beautiful: blue skies and cool days. Perfect for throwing the windows wide open and letting the breeze blow through the house. I have to admit though that we needed to close up the house on Sunday night because it was too darned cold! 47 degrees F overnight!

The heat wave of last week did allow the pool to recover slightly in temperature (74 F) and we went for what we believe was the last swim on Friday night. With the past few nights dipping down into the 50’s and high 40’s, the temperature has tanked back down to 70 F again. I don’t think it’s going to recover this time.

We’ve had this visitor several times in the front yard. Eating acorns I’m thinking since it is always in the same spot: under the oak tree.

The only thing really left blooming in my yard is the overgrown morning glory vine that is threatening to take over the deck and Rick’s weather station. It got a late start this year.

Another sad thing on the winding down side of things is that we had to euthanize our old kitty, Vincent van “Goatee” last week. He was our little “Frenchman” kitty that came with us when we moved back from France. He was 18 1/2 years old and failing in health. It was hard to make the decision to let him go but when friend Carolyn visited and she sat down and talked to him, the end result was that she agreed it was time. Over the past year we’ve known that he probably had cancer from the results of his blood test and he had to live in an x-large doggie airline crate because of his lack of bathroom habits. He stopped taking care of his fur and it became matted, fell out and never regrew. We nursed him along but his quality of life confined to a crate was poor.

Over the past month or so he started looking very gaunt and was really nothing but skin and bones. With our three week vacation looming, we knew we could not leave him with a cat sitter coming in once a day, and feared that he would pass while we were gone. Here he is with eBay in better days, and getting a treat on Christmas three years ago. It’s hard to remember that he ever looked that good; he’d been failing for so long. Sleep well, sweet Vinnie.

And the gearing up, you ask? Well, I was gifted this gorgeous fig tree by a neighbor.

It came complete with instructions for its care.

And figs!!!!

Some of which we’ve already harvested and eaten!

And the biggest “gearing up” is of course for our westward trek to our cabin back in Colorado. Next week this time we’ll be somewhere in Indiana! Lists are being made. Piles of things to take are starting to accumulate in the spare bedroom.  Recipes are being poured over and rated (or not) as cabin meal candidates. The Suburban got washed and awaits its interior cleaning this weekend and the donning of its roof rack and storage pod. Soon, I tell the dogs. Soon you’ll be running free over the high prairie—and Bella—you’ll be swimming in the beaver pond. And your Dad and I will be sitting on the screened-in porch after dinner listening to the coyotes sing.

Very soon.

Thanks for slogging through this week with me!