Saturday, August 6, 2016
My humans are not filling my food bowl. I am traumatized. It isn't that I am hungry, but I have to know
I have food when I want it. My bowl is
empty. I must beg. I must express my displeasure.
My morning walk took me around the golf course. Spouse came for a while and we walked some of
the side trails. It is crispy cool but
the sun is shining. Lots of jack rabbits
escort us. We get back and ready Hannah
for departure. As usual, things
break. A leak here, a broken clip there. Frustrating, but it is to be expected. My orchids have been faring well, giving me
much pleasure. Rudy knows we are getting
ready to get on the road and he is giving us the stink eye. Tough!
We continue north on 395, through the town of Altura. There are marshes right next to the high
desert shrub forming a stark contrast in topography. We pass through the Modoc
wildlife refuge which looks like a haven for waterfowl. In English, we really don't have a good word
for small mountains. We have hills, we
have mountains, but what is a small mountain?
In Spanish, it is el cerrito. So,
los cerritos surround us as we make our way north. They are a mix of desert shrub and ponderosa
pine. We climb some and it gets
pinier. We pass into Oregon and get to
the bucolic town of Lakeview. It is a
step back in time with the little mom and pop storefronts with shade awnings.
We stop in an ancient coffee shop for lunch and pick up a
few things at the grocery store and continue north. The trees are thinning out when we get to
Lake Abert. The trees are GONE! Like an apocolypse! There are buttes as if we were in the Arizona
desert. Lake Abert is a huge shallow
lake that is probably only at 20% capacity.
And it is brown all around. Think
of brown mustard. Not a single
tree. BROWN BROWN BROWN!!! After about 20 miles, the lake is behind us
and we are into desert scrub... no trees.
This is an incredibly lonely stretch of road without a single tree and
very few cars. We see a sign that it is
open to free range cattle, and we see none!
Even they don't want to be there!
This is every bit as boring as the road from Reno to Winnemucca. On the Leslie bore-o-meter scale where
minimally boring is 1 and maximum boring is 10, this is easily a 12! And we only have 70 more miles to go... Both of us are having trouble staying
awake. Yawn...
When we got to the turn in the road, where 395 joins 20, the
bore-o-meter faded away. High desert
with hay farms and meadows replaced the Nevada brown. At a rest stop, we decided to take a catnap
(Rudy's idea). The weather is mild and
breezy making it so comfortable as we doze off...
An hour later, we headed into Burns while Rudy was listening
to Al Stewart's Year of the Cat. We got
a spot in an older park with beautiful large trees. A creek runs by our site but the shrub
prevents us from going down to it. The
owners have had it for only 2 months and have great plans. Hope they don't ruin its charm...
After dinner, and another leak repair, we took a walk down
the street, past the deer grazing in a truck storage yard. I am plotting my morning walk, past the
horses and through the homey neighborhood.
Rudy is hoping to get off the leash and into the bushes by the creek...
ain't gonna happen!
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