Home At Last - 'til the next adventure!

Phaedra here from good ole Chapel Hill via Rocky Mountain National Park: Zoe and I wanted to finish up our journey "tails" and say our final adieu until our next adventure.

It seemed like “coming home” when we got back up here from Colorado Springs.  Rocky Mountain National Park is such a great place for us.  There are elk that roam all over the place and we really love to smell the scat that they leave.  Every night at about the same time - around midnight - we all wake up and listen to the coyotes.  There must be hundreds of them howling.  If you’ve never heard them then you can’t imagine how eerie they sound.  They go on and on - first from one area then answered from another area.  One of our friends, Zach the dog,  even saw a coyote on the dog trail around the campground. The coyote just went on about his own business.  Wish I’d been there, too.

We stayed in the same spot as we did before and you should have seen how happy Zoe was to be back. The campground has open spaces between sites plus we weren’t full so Dad would throw the Kong.  Run, run, run until she drops.  One silly dog.  Elk also come into our campground.  Lucky for Papa and Mama, I’m on guard at all times.  they were reading peacefully one afternoon and wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t barked at two elk who were right next to us - I kept those elk away!

First day, we all drove into the park to look for animals. We saw nothing.  So we went back to the camper   and saw 49 elk within our grounds. Amazing!  Zoe wanted to chase them. See, silly dog, I am so much smarter.

We were lucky to have friends visit us in Rocky Mountain.  Zach’s and his family, Linda and Dave, from California/Taos and Carla from Florida came to see Zoe and me.  We were left home alone when they went adventuring.  I don’t know what it is about Zoe, but people can’t seem to resist her pleading looks and her subtle ball handling. 

This last week, though, we had the folks to ourselves. They took us looking for sheep almost everyday, but we never saw any. We missed them a couple of times by a half hour.   But we had fun trying. We all went over Trail Ridge Road, which is the highest road in the country at over 12,000 feet.  We were looking for moose on the west side of the mountains.  We never saw any on that trip, only a marmot. We went back to the top a few days later and saw bull elks next to the road. They were not even scared when I started barking.  We did get to picnic at the Continental Divide at Milner Pass.  Zoe almost jumped in the lake when Mama took us down for a little jaunt while Papa got out the food.  I loved all the smells.

One day after scoping out Sheep Lakes to no avail, Papa and Mama saw their first moose on the eastern side of the mountains. I guess there are only about 5 on this side so seeing one was really lucky. Also, all of the elk are coming down from the high country, now, getting ready for the yearly rut. The males are gathering their herds and trying to see who’s the strongest.  We drove out nightly to watch and listen to them.  The bulls start to bugle if other bulls come near their herds. We even saw two start to bump heads.  It was not a real fight because one was a younger bull and he left after a little pushing and shoving.  I bet I could get all of those elk to go wherever I wanted them to go.  You know, I am half Sheltie and half Border Collie.  Those breeds are known to be the smartest breeds of dogs, so I could have nipped and yapped them into shape without having to butt heads with anyone!  I wasn’t allowed out of the car!

It’s a real shame that the parks don’t allow dogs on trails.  We missed out on a hike around Sprague Lake.  Mama and Papa were surprised how different it is this year because of the loss of so many trees due to Pine Bark Beetle.  The last time we were here, there weren’t but a handful of trees affected on this side of the summit.  Now, everywhere you look you can see dead trees.

Coffee on the Rocks has been a fun hang-out for us this time too.  All of the people who work there think we are locals.  We even get a discount on our coffee and bagels.  Well, Mama and Papa do anyway.  Zoe and I don’t drink coffee.  We do love all the ducks on the pond, though.
It’s been a great way to end our trip even though we still have about 1800 miles to go home. Mama will do a lot of the driving which helps Papa a lot. Hope you have enjoyed our journey. We are looking forward to our next one.

Happy Trails to one and all.




Phaedra and Zoe

                         

Carson City to Colorado Springs

Zoe here in the land of heat:

After leaving the cool of the redwoods, we crossed the mountains into Carson City, Nevada. Our campground was kind of interesting - nothing but stones but on the edge of the desert; no grass for Phaedra and me. Mama and Papa had to walk us on rocks or sagebrush and keep an eye out for rattlesnakes. We survived, but grass is much better!

We got to drive over a beautiful, scenic pass to Lake Tahoe. What a beautiful lake!  We really wanted to swim in it, but we heard that it is really cold.  You know, Phaedra isn’t as young as she used to be so we decided it would be better to forgo a swim.  When someone gets older, you need to take really good care of them.  I want my sister around for lots more trips.  Tahoe had lots of people, too.  Plus there were casinos which got Papa to thinking that he wanted to check one out.

One night, Papa and Mama went out to a casino.  Phae and I expected them to come home with a new motor home from all the money they were going to win.  Not exactly the case, though.  We heard them talking about how different this was over how it was in Las Vegas - people dressed up at the casinos, waitresses strolled around the lobby offering free drinks to the gamblers, and there used to be an excitement in the air instead of a bunch of lonely seeming people sitting in front of a machine, smoking cigarettes, and pushing buttons over and over.  I don’t think they will rush out to any casino in the future.

We got to go to the oldest, permanent settlement in Utah. Some of the buildings were original.  We saw a safe that used to hold lots of gold in it. They liked to go to a little restaurant called Genoa Station where they would have coffee and breakfast on the front porch.  We liked this sleepy little town and wish we could have gone with them.  They said the bacon smelled really great.  We all visited Virginia City, too.  It is an old western town and had lots saloons and casinos.  It, also, had too many people for us to enjoy walking around on the wooden boardwalks.



Bad news - Papa woke up one morning and couldn’t see out of most of his eye.  Turns out, he had a detached retina!  It sure was lucky for us that this happened in Carson City - there was a wonderful Retina Speciality Clinic there and he had surgery Wednesday.  On Friday he was seen and his eyesight had already improved a bunch and on Monday, Papa was released from his docs and off we went on our way to Colorado Springs.

Before we left, Papa, Phaedra, and I took a couple of Valiums.  You might ask, “Why would the three of you take Valium?”  Well, let me tell you why.  Mama had to drive the camper because Papa could not see well enough and it would tire out his eye too much.  She actually did a pretty good job.  She drove across the Bonneville Flats where they speed test planes and cars.  I peeked at the speedometer and we were going almost 80.  I hid my head under the bed and she finally realized that she was going a bit fast.  After all, she wasn't a test driver!  Seventy works just fine for us.  The second day we cut our dose down to one pill!  The only place she really didn’t like driving was on the way in to Denver with ALL the traffic.  Papa was able to take over and we arrived in Colorado Springs without too much stress.  I think Mama kinda liked driving - not in cities, but where it’s not bumper to bumper traffic she doesn’t mind.

Colorado Springs was a blast.  The day we arrived, President Obama stopped in at Colorado College to campaign and the people really liked him.  We didn’t go, but we did get caught in all of his traffic!

We visited the Garden of the Gods, and took hikes in it.  It is owned by the City of Colorado Springs and there are funky rock formations to climb on and hike through.

We had a great campground where there was GRASS, got to see lots of other dogs, and since the folks were around a fair amount to let Papa heal, we weren’t alone too much. What a change from the desert!  Oh, and green grass wasn’t the only kind of grass that was available.  We found it interesting that within a couple of blocks from our campground, there were at least three dispensaries for medical marijuana.  (Mama and Papa called it grass, too.)   Imagine that in North Carolina!  Each dispensary had bars on the windows and the cost on a banner on the front of the buildings.  It was unusual, to say the least!

Since Papa and Mama spent their 43rd Wedding Anniversary in the hospital in Reno/Sparks, they decided to celebrate the anniversary at the Broadmoor Hotel by having brunch.  They love this place and go there every time we go to Colorado Springs.

Did you know that the home of Team USA is in Colorado Springs?  If I could have tried out for Team USA, I would have entered the Olympics.  I would have come in first place in the ball chase and the eating contests.  I wonder if those are events in the games.  Michael Phelps, Nick McCrory (who is from Chapel Hill and dived for Mama’s high school), Missy Franklin and lots of other great medal winners trained at the Olympic Center.  Lots of them came back to Colorado Springs while we were there.  I wish I could have met Missy.  She has a really nice smile.  I bet she likes dogs, too.

We were left alone when the folks went to a place called Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.  This is a place where there used to be Giant Redwood Trees just like in California.  One day, millions of years ago, a volcano erupted and sent mud and lava into this Redwood Forest.  The trees all died and broke off, but the stumps which were covered with the mud/lava turned to stone and are now petrified.  They are really big.  There are lots of other fossils, too, like dragonflies, spiders, flowers, ferns, and other things that had been attracted by the forest.  I bet it would have been really interesting to see all of these things.  We stayed at home.  We also stayed home when they visited Cripple Creek - an old time mining town.  Oh, well.  I guess I can sleep as well at home as in the car so I didn’t miss too much!

Do you remember that we seem to have been followed by wild fires this trip.  First, the High Park Fire in Fort Collins, then the Estes Park Fire, then the Hood River Fire, then the Northern California Fire, then the Chaco Canyon Fire of Colorado Springs.  We need to get back to the land of humidity and rain!  Anyway, we drove up to the neighborhoods where the Chaco Canyon Fire was and we saw some really sad areas and some places that were left alone.  There were signs that we loved seeing, too.

Well, here's wishing you Happy Trails and leaving you with a few other pictures that we like.

So long for now from your furry friends,

Zoe and Phaedra