Last night as I lay in bed I had formed the perfect blog post in my head. Of course, all those words did not come to mind again this morning when I woke up.

After so many hours on the road it took us awhile to get our land legs back. Yesterday we still felt as if we were vibrating and our legs didn’t want to work. Weird. We try to stop every three to fours hours to stretch and walk the dogs, but still, 12 hours on the road for two days, then 6 hours the last day is a lot.

We did see some flooding occurring in the North Platte area. The river was way over its banks and flooding the fields along the road. We were a little concerned the night we stayed in Grand Island as we had heard the Platte was flooding west of us and we had to cross the river to get to our hotel, but in the end it was not an issue.

We stopped in Laramie to do a quick shop at the super Walmart and a bite of lunch before heading to the cabin.

Upon our arrival we were greeted with twin pack rat nests of assorted goodies on either side of the door on our stoop. A perfect pack rat greeting. I should have taken a photo of it because it really looked pretty comical, but we were in such a hurry to kick it aside so we could open the door to see whether or not they had also gained entry to inside. Thankfully, they had not.

Here is a photo of our pack rat offering of this morning, and what follows are two pics of the “nests” we kicked off.









If they weren’t so pesky and their pee didn’t reek to high heaven they might be cute to have around.

Rick got to work turning on the water and the propane and starting the refrigerator which is sometimes hard to get going. While he was working on those important tasks I got busy with sweeping up the cluster flies that formed a black carpet under each window. Gross. They’ll continue to come out now that the cabin is warming up and we’ll be swatting them for days to come.

Rick spent an hour on the phone with Hughes Net trying to get the internet up and running. There seems to be no way around going through this routine every time we come.

It took about two hours to get everything running, clean up, bring everything in from the truck and get it all put away. Not too bad.

Today we’ve just tackled a few more chores and have gone for a few walks. The weather is sunny and around 70 degrees F. The skies are blue and filled with puffy white clouds which scud quickly across the sky in the very breezy conditions we are experiencing today.

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

The pack rats are too funny! Especially since they did not get inside nor did any damage, altho, it seems like they really wanted to be in your cabin….. Or maybe, what they left on your doorstep was a welcome offering??? HAHA!

Sounds like a lovely day. I can’t imagine that many hours on the road in a car…. a train, yes, but not in a car.

Enjoy and looking forward to family photos!

Too bad you can’t train those pack rats to bring you something useful.  Although the twigs and pinecone would work as kindling for the fire.  So glad they didn’t get inside.  Now you just need some coyote urine to protect all the wiring in the truck!

Bigsis, they are kind of funny and if not for the destruction they cause, like I said, they would be cute. It was surely a welcome offering! Just not the kind I wanted to have.

C, they brought pieces of ventilation piping leftover from some work we had done, scraps of plastic, some ground stakes, etc, etc. I’m afraid we don’t have any coyote urine so we have to resort to traps under the truck so they don’t make nests under the hood and chew through any wires. Sad, but necessary. :(

Was doing some googling.  Other pack rat deterrants:  moth balls, peppermint oil, or try spraying the wires in the truck with bitter apple (if you can find any).