Retirement Travel and a Weird Mix of Other Stuff
Since my life is pretty darn quiet, I found this one pretty easy. Of course, having a house in the woods helps.
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“Is it an owl?” I asked myself. “Maybe it’s one of those big woodpeckers. Or some sort of hawk. Or a strange migrant on his way north.”
I was starting to get excited, thinking there may be a new bird in the neighborhood. I listened more closely as it sounded off pretty regularly.
That’s when I realized what it was.
A rooster. I really am quite the nature girl, aren’t I?
Back to the walk thing. I do enjoy going for walks on the “roads” (dirt and gravel paths) and in the woods around our WV place. I like it just because it’s always great to be outside. But I also like it because I get to see all of our dogs REALLY enjoying life.
They LOVE being able to walk around and explore without being tethered to a human. They LOVE running freely through the woods, in the swamps, through the streams. Whenever I see my girls running around up here, practically drunk with happiness, I think about all of the poor dogs who have to live their lives in kennels. Or outside, in all weather, tied to a tree. That’s no way to live!
Anyway, because said dogs were waiting for me to hurry up and finish this blog post, I decided just to give you a pictorial journey. So you can see how much the girls enjoy our little outings.
So, do you think they enjoy our walks?
For those who don’t remember, she dug up a box turtle. I am pretty sure it was dead, but I didn’t want the dogs eating it so I stashed it somewhere safely out of their reach.
Later, when I told Hubby the story, he said it was probably hibernating. And he said that poor turtle was going to wake up come Spring, find himself upside down in a tree and wonder what the heck kind of mischief he’d been into before nodding off to sleep.
I still think it was dead. Its face was all dried up and shriveled looking.
But how many times do you think that turtle crossed my mind over the last couple of weeks? I didn’t count, but I thought of him a lot. Especially after a friend’s husband, upon hearing the story, said he too thought the thing was hibernating.
I was sure all the crazy winds we had a week or so ago would’ve knocked the turtle out of that tree. So imagine my surprise last night when Belle discovered the turtle STILL in the tree.
And he looks exactly the same way he did when I put him there.
He’s dead, I tell you.
But just to make sure, I’m going to take him down and put him somewhere safe where the girls can’t dig him up so we can see what happens to him.
On another note… the girls were sure glad to get back to the WV place.
Is there any doubt these two are buddies?
K just loves walking around sniffing everything.
Belle loves running. I mean, she really loves it. Everywhere she goes, she runs. Here she is running to catch up with K and me. Meg had already ditched us to go visit Buddy.
I was really happy to see this pine tree survived this season’s multiple snowstorms. It’s an important tree. Not only did it shelter a bunch of deer (or a few deer for a bunch of days) during the blizzards, it is also a favorite hangout for the various little birds that live in the woods around here.
K was doing so good sticking with us that we stayed out walking for about an hour. Well, Belle was running. K and I were walking. Though K was walking fast, wide circles around me sniffing everything.
This was the scene at our place shortly after we got back from our adventure…
There’s still snow on the ground here. It’s melting slowly, but surely. Maybe by the next time we come for a visit it will all be gone. Time will tell, I guess.
Despite all the snow, the dogs were thrilled to be back. I was, too.
K was digging and digging and digging. I figured it couldn’t hurt to let her dig, what could she find under all that snow?
I guess she showed me!
Once the turtle had been uncovered, I knew the next step would be one, two or even three dogs eating a turtle for lunch. Unless I intervened.
Upon closer examination, I decided the turtle was actually dead, not just sleeping (aka hibernating).
I had three disposal options.
I elected option number 3. When you are in the woods, the most convenient out of reach places are the trees.
Hubby is convinced the turtle is not dead, but hibernating. It’s going to wake up in the Spring and be all like, “How the Hell did I get up here? That must have been some crazy Winter.”
As much as I love our WV house, I am totally dreading the next visit. Some heavy-duty cleaning will most definitely be required.
Hopefully, by then, the snow will be gone and the ground will be dry. I know the girls agree. Walking on snow that either has a slippery frozen crust that they crash through or, mostly during midday, has the consistency of a giant slurpee really wears them out. Here’s some video proof.
The next snow storm, which is pending as I write this, has shifted. Latest predictions have us getting between 5 and 8 inches. But it’s one of those storms where there are an awful lot of different variables at play. We won’t know how much snow we’re talking about for sure until sometime on Friday when part 2 of the storm has passed.
I, of course, hope for a foot. My friends in the northeastern part of the US might really get walloped this time. We’ll just have to wait and see…
All is well, but boy is there a lot of snow. The snow at our Maryland home has been melting at a much faster rate.
I’m not really sure why, but K likes to spend a lot of time in my lap when we are here. I had just uploaded the above pictures when she jumped into my lap. So I made Hubby take a picture of us to add to this post. Yes, I have bed head. I am not showering until after I do some shoveling (there’s a lot that needs to be done).
I hope you enjoyed this morning’s pics. I’ll probably have more to add later. For now, it’s time to shovel.
Four days ago, we had a blizzard. We had one in December, too. Now we’re having another. They haven’t officially called it a blizzard yet. But we’re supposed to get 10 to 20 inches of snow and it’s going to get really windy. You might as well call it Blizzard #3.
We only got about 27 inches of snow at our house in Maryland. In Romney, where we have our WV place, they got 33 inches of snow. That’s a mere six inches more than we got here. But it sure sounds like a lot more. Especially when you consider how many hilly, windy roads there are in Hampshire County.
There are fewer people, true. And not nearly as many suburban sidestreets. But three feet of snow is a lot to deal with. So I was not surprised to learn that roads there are still slick. They, too, are getting more snow today. What did surprise me was the way they reported on road conditions.
Seriously. Check out the small headline…
That’s pretty funny. I posted this image from their Web site to prove that’s what they said. Maybe folks around here should heed that warning. If not, and they get stuck, just tell them, “Well, why’d you go out. DOH. There’s three feet of snow on the ground!”
They take directness one step farther by saying, essentially, now that outside contractors have been hired, the main roads are in pretty good shape. Way to show your highway workers love, dudes. DOH!
A few months ago, I looked into the cost of a plane ticket to fly from our local airport (Baltimore Washington International) to Zurich, Switzerland then, 10 days later, on to Brussels, Belgium and a few days after that back to BWI. I checked fares for the same itinerary from Dulles Airport in Virginia. From Dulles, it was about $400 per ticket cheaper.
I wasn’t ready to buy the tickets back then, I was just checking.
Yesterday, I checked again. Now, for whatever reason, it’s cheaper to leave from BWI. Which is cool because we live like five minutes away from there.
Almost all of the flights from BWI have connecting flights in Philadelphia. It just so happens that Philadelphia isn’t that far away from here, so I thought maybe we could save a little more money by driving up to Philly and leaving from there.
I was wrong.
It would cost about $320 MORE, per ticket to fly out of Philadelphia. That makes absolutely no sense. We’d be eliminating an entire plane flight for two people and it would cost us $640 more dollars.
If you have been following Shannon’s blog, you know she made it to Laos today. I’ve been keeping a map of Shannon’s travels. Today, after adding Laos, I zoomed out to see just how far away she has gotten. I do that periodically. When I zoomed out and moved the map toward the right so I could see Maryland, USA, this is what I saw…
After seeing that image, I got to thinking, “I wonder if she’s farther away heading east or west?” That’s what was weird.
Look what happened when I moved the map in the other direction…
I guess she really is halfway around the world. This isn’t as much weird and/or strange as it is just an odd coincidence.
There sure is a lot of water between us now.
Yes, we’re back to that again. During lunchtime today, I took a quick stroll around the neighborhood for some between storm images. I want my followers to see what the world looks like three days after a 27-inch snowstorm. And then, what it looks like with another 10-20 inches of snow on top of that.
That picture really doesn’t make it look too bad.
But check this out. All along our street and the main street through our community, there are piles of snow as tall as or taller than me. And I am not a short girl.
I can’t wait to see how tall these piles are in a couple of days. The snow is supposed to stop tomorrow, but it will likely be a couple of days, AGAIN, before we can really go anywhere.
I still love the snow, though. Call me crazy if you must. I just do.