July 14; Striking Out

July 14:  Striking out

 Every morning, Dad walks over to the corner, sticks his paws in a hole and splashes his face with water.  Then, he smears some white stuff on his face, and little by little, wipes the white stuff off.  He splashes his face some more, then the water with the foamy white stuff goes down the hole.  I sit on a perch and supervise so I know this is true.  I watch the hole swallow the foamy stuff.  Daddy then splashes some more water to make sure the white stuff is gone.  My question is, is this something I should be doing?  Is it something I didn't learn? I then lick the hole. 

When we are without electricity, we have no clocks.  Therefore, we really sleep until we are done.  This morning, that was 7:45.  I rarely sleep till 7, let alone 7:45.  It is amazing how that works.  Of course when it isn't dark till 11pm, we don't fall asleep early.  Our whole rhythm gets off.  We eat later, we play later, etc.  Rudy has decided not to go into Thunder Paw mode until we actually get up.  Then, there is no stopping him.  Today, we will cruise around some and take a hike.

Once we finally got our butts in gear, we headed out starting at Lake Minnewaka and Two Jack Lake.  I am not sure if they were big horn sheep or goats, but there they were stopping traffic.  We explored a bit then headed up highway 1A (not to be confused with highway 1 eh?).   We saw a couple of hiking trails but the parking was horrendous.  We kept heading north and found Moose Meadows.  There was parking so we thought we would try it.  We met some people that said the hike to Ink Pots was worth it so we gave it a try. 

It started out very woodsy, with lots of wildflowers along the trail.  The trail got muddy in a few spots.  Then there were lots of fallen trees, kind of like walking through the middle of a pick-up stix game!  Then the trail got narrow... and the mosquitoes came... and the trail turned more into a game trail than a hiking trail.  Then we said screw the Ink Pots!  With all the beautiful terrain out there, who needs this and we made our way back to the truck.  Crew, not all adventures end with a positive result...

Since we were close to Lake Louise, we decided to head north.  We get off the freeway and we hit traffic.  There were cars everywhere.  As the Lake Louise Lodge comes into view, there is even more traffic.  Who needs this?  We turned around and went to the ski area.  There we found a comfortable place to finish our lunches and watch the scenery.  Looks a lot different in summer.  We have skied here before and had a great time.  But neither Spouse or I could remember anything about the lodge facilities.  We headed back, stopped at the grocery store (aka ZOO) and got back to Rudy and Hannah.  

Not exactly the most exciting day.  So let me enlighten you on some Spouse antics.

 I know some of you are aware of his quirks.  This one has Crew and me going crazy. 

This is the story of Spouse and the trash can.  You see, he likes to re-use trash bags.  To do this, you essentially can't put anything in them.  So, he saves the bags that bread comes in.  On his orders, we are to put any organic stuff (like onion peelings, coffee grinds, etc.) into the bread bag so that the actual trash bag is clean.  In his mind, since we are in bear country (mind you, he does this when we are not in bear country, but that is another story), if the smelly trash is in the bread bag, the bears cannot smell it.  Therefore, they will not break into Hannah and head for the trash can.  Huh?  It would be real convenient to have all the trash in one place (the trash can), but with him, we now have the trash can in the cabinet, and the smelly, icky trash bag on the kitchen counter that the bears would not think of attacking.  Really?  The bottom line, is too cheap to use new trash bags.  Oh the pain...

He is also tres deaf.  A typical conversation:

Spouse: How long is this highway we are on?

Me:  About twenty miles.
Spouse:  Six miles?

Huh?  How did he come up with 'six'?  Not only is he deaf, he has a force field around his head where only certain vibrations penetrate.  Crew and I constantly marvel at his interpretations.  It is amazing I haven't taken him out before now.  Oh wait, he just brought me a lovely dinner.  I love that guy!