Saturday, August 13, 2016 AWOOOOOOO!

Saturday, August 13, 2016

I can fool my humans.  I can turn into THUNDERPAWS at night!  I run, I fly, I chase inanimate objects even when the sun goes down!

This morning's walk took us out of the campground.  We saw a sign about a wolf center, so we started up the gravel road for about a mile.  We are surrounded by a pretty pine forest and there is nobody out.  We get to the wolf center at 8 and it isn't open till 9, so we head back to Hannah to ready her, and we figure we will come back.  No really great place to park her, but we can keep her on the side enough where it could work.

When we get there, we can barely turn around, but we do it and hike up the road.  It is supposedly RV friendly, but that was laughable to us.  It is a small center that currently only houses two she wolves that were rescued from a private party.  They originally had part of a captive pack that they used for study purposes for about 15 years.  After all that pack died off, they took in these rescues, which numbered 5 at the time, but only 2 remain.  We hiked across the beautiful meadow up the trails to the viewing area hoping to see them.  We waited... As Elmer Fudd would say 'Be vewy vewy qwiet'... 

We hear the cawing of a raven.  Other birds are making their own unique sounds.  I hear the buzzing of the bugs...  The bugs are eating me.  I feel proboscis after proboscis penetrating my flesh.  I try not to move, lest I scare the wolves.  Finally, after being eaten alive, I flail like a girl walking through a spider web!  Let's go to the other viewing area and maybe it will be better.  It was, but we never saw the wolves. After about a half hour, we left them behind.  The wolves have a 2 acre pen with a whole lot of trees and a stream, so there is lots of cover for them.  For being in a pen, they live a good life!  A huge red tailed hawk followed us back to Hannah.

We bid are farewell then tried to get my fishing license again.  It is amazing what a good night's rest will do for a computer.  We then headed south on 95, then east on 62.  This is a small two lane highway weaving through gentle hills with various farms.  Lots of wheat and lots of colors, once again, a live patchwork quilt.  On to 162 into the town of Kamiah.  We heard it is pretty here, and it is.  Our idea is that we would start hunting for the type of campgrounds we found last year; off the grid, low density, few people.  We find a decent RV park, right on the Clearwater River, which feeds the Snake river.  We set up Hannah, figuring it might be better to explore without her, and were we right! 

We headed up Rt. 12 along the river.  Mountains on the left meet the mountains on the right and join at a beautiful wide, but shallow river.  What's not to like about that!  A few houses line the road with huge properties, but they are not ostentatious at all.  About 30 miles up, around the town of Lowell, we see our prey... a campground.  Hmm, nothing over 30 feet recommended.  Since we don't have Hannah, we check it out...  We stumbled upon the Wal-mart client base!  The sites are small, although there are a few trailers crammed in.  How they got in their spots is beyond us.  There are lots of people (it is a Saturday in summer after all),  and everybody is of the larger size.  Could this be Appalachia and we don't know it?

So far, the western side of the mountain range is not panning out like we planned.  The weather is warmer.  For fishing, you are more apt to catch bass rather than trout.  We have one more area to explore, and if that lets us down, we are heading east to where we were last year.  It isn't that this area isn't drop dead gorgeous, because it is.  But it is a bit more travelled.  The jury is still out...

One more thing, we had to tighten Rudy's collar today.  We are not sure if he lost an ounce on his diet, or if he stretched it out hanging on the door handle...