Sunday, July 17, 2011
Driving, driving
and more driving
We finally left the house around 10 am on Saturday and got
up to
Watertown
about 6pm.
Esa and Zed did great on the
ride.
Esa REALLY shocked us and actually
laid down on the back seat.
Not all of the
time, but a lot of time.
When not laying
down, she was sitting on the back seat (another first).
She finally got to her usual seated position
with about 1 hour left in the drive.
We only made 3 stops on the way up – one for a bathroom
break (outside of Hershey, PA),
the second at Wendy’s in Binghamton, NY for lunch and then in the suburbs of Syracuse to get gas.
Lunch was interesting.
We had a “picnic” in the lot by the drive-thru lane and the road leading
behind Wendy’s to the truck stop. One
guy going through the drive-thru yelled to us “having a picnic lunch?” Another lady started to walk towards me when
Dan was coming towards me with our food – I’m sure it was to talk about the
dogs, but then changed her mind when she saw Dan walking the same way.
Watertown, NY
When we got to the hotel, we found out that the hotel was
actually 2 floors and we were on the 2
nd floor.
I prefer the “motel” styles with the
pups.
It just makes it so much easier
when we have to take them out, but oh well.
We’ve done it before we can easily do it again.
We stepped in the room, and it’s a smoking
room (pee u), but I heard the guy at the front desk say that they we full for
the night.
I figured, whatever, it’s not
going to kill us sleeping here for one night.
We then took the pups for a walk and ended at Taco Bell to
grab something to take back to eat. I
can’t tell you the last time I had Taco Bell.
It was good. Then it was time to
TRY to sleep. Well, we believe that Esa
was so tired that she couldn’t get comfortable and keep whining and going to
the door. So Dan took her out about
midnight. Come to find out, there was a
party in the parking lot. No wonder the
halls were a little loud. Zed would bark
or growl every once in awhile and it also didn’t help with getting Esa to
sleep.
Esa would do well, when we (one of us taking turns) petted
her to sleep then we would go to sleep.
Until the neighbor’s baby next door started crying, which wasn’t bad,
but then they would SCREAM at the baby.
“Go to F’ing Sleep” “I don’t have any “F’ing cereal up here” (I think
that was towards the father). This
happened a couple of times during the night.
It didn’t help that the bed was terrible – every creak and crack from it
whenever you moved. It was just a bad
night. So anyway, we got out of there
ASAP this morning and got on the road.
O Canada
The drive from
Watertown
to the cottage went well.
Crossing the
border was no issue at all and Dan said that’s the fastest he can remember ever
going through.
Zed was a pain - back and
forth from the front to back seat – too many turns.
He kept thinking we were going to stop.
We finally got to the cottage about 12:30/1pm. Unloaded a little and then went over to the
neighbors to say hi. Actually, Esa made
her way over there first and then I followed.
She was excited to see her international friends, Luka & Duke. Then it was unpack the car, make the shopping
list and head out.
We got about ½ mile from the house and figured out that we
didn’t have the shopping list.
2
nd
time out, we had better luck and ended up at Ricky’s for lunch before
groceries.
It was really good.
Groceries went well - $200 later! Actually not too bad – kind of equal to our
big trips, but with no coupons. This
evening has just been hanging out and will probably be an early night. It’s kind of humid, so hopefully it will cool
down some tonight.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Really roughing
it….
So I call coming to the cottage “roughing it” since you
can’t drink the water (it’s from the lake).
Well, this morning about 5:30 am, we had a MAJOR thunderstorm and lost
power.
GREAT – really going to REALLY be
roughing it!
Esa woke up around 7:30 am and still no power. About 8:45, I called HydroOne (the power
company) and found out that over 6,000 customers were without power and they
expected it to be on by 9:40. So we had
untoasted bagels and English muffins for breakfast. Within 10 minutes of eating, the power comes
back on.
I had kind of figured today would be a hang out day at the
cottage anyway. But with the rain, there
was no way we were going to go geocaching.
So, I’ve finished my first book (Miracle in the Andes)
and the pups have been hanging out with their “international” friends – Luka
and Duke. Dan went on the paddleboat
while I (and the pups) took a nap. I
started my second book “The Lake Shore Unlimited”.
It looks like it’s going to storm again so who knows what
will happen with the power.
Wildlife
I forgot to mention yesterday that we saw a beaver about
7:15 pm swimming by.
I was too worried
that Zed would see it and go jump in the lake after it that I didn’t grab the
camera to get a picture of it.
More than
likely we’ll have another spotting.
It’s a little noisy around here. There is a falcon nest in the trees beside
the cottage. The babies squawk like
crazy. They have been jumping branch to
branch, spreading their wings. I’ve
tried to get a good picture and got some.
The pups (and their international friends) had fun chasing a
squirrel this morning. We were next door
talking with the neighbors and Esa saw a squirrel. Of course the other 3 followed. The squirrel ran around the tree a couple of
times (with all pups following) and then up the tree with all 4 dogs looking up
at it. Esa and Zed were the last to let
it go. I basically had to pull Esa away
and Zed finally left the tree. It was
cute.
Book Review –
“Miracle in the Andes” by Nando Parrado
A lot of the books I find out about are because they are at
the newsstands at work and I go and glance at them.
This was one of them.
I had mentioned it to my boss at the time and
she got it for me for Christmas.
We both
enjoy stories about adventures (of course, this one was an unplanned
adventure).
This story was wonderfully written and you could easily
picture yourself there/watching a movie of this. This is an amazing story of survival. It’s just unimaginable on how these guys
survived 72 days in the Andes in the bitter
cold - Along with trekking through the mountains to get to civilization. Would I be able to do it? Maybe when I was in my 20’s like these guys,
but no way today. Would I be able to eat
the flesh of humans? In a life or death
situation – probably. Would I be able to
mentally survive afterwards and live a “normal” life? Probably not.
The story was a real life “Lord of the Flies” and “Lost”. You get a survivor’s point of view of the
different personalities and who were the leaders and who were the followers.
It was a very easy read and hard to put down. You kept wondering what was going to happen
next. I thought the pictures were
amazing. They looked like guys out on an
adventure and not who were stranded in the mountains left for dead.
These guys had the will to live – and Nando expresses how
strong that was for him in the book. He
was determined to get back to his father.
When he did, he saw how his father’s life had fallen apart. Without his return, his father would not been
able to live.
I liked the follow up on Nando’s life and all of the
survivors. I’m shocked on how normal
their lives are. Of course, deep down, I
bet they live their life to the fullest and enjoy all the moments they have
with their family. At least, I hope they
do.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The annual chase
Well, the trip to
Canada wouldn’t be complete without
Esa taking off at least once.
It
happened this morning.
I ended up
chasing her about 4 houses down the street – Dan was still sleeping.
She just started walking after something she
smelt and wouldn’t listen.
She got a head start since Zed was outside with me and I had
to get him inside first, get her leash and go after her. It didn’t help that I only had flip flops on
and with the grass still damp from the morning, I had no traction “in” my shoe.
I finally got her after about 5 minutes (maybe a little
more).
Geocaching
We went to Warsaw Caves & Kettles today.
Of course, we always have an adventure – even when we are
just pulling out of the driveway. Dan
was working on getting Esa in the car and had said to me, leave the tailgate
open. Well, we left it open as we pulled
away from the house. LOL.
Within a mile from the house, we had to stop because a whole
flock (if that’s what you call it) of wild turkeys were crossing the road –
with all different aged babies. Some
really small others a couple of months.
We went to the cave side first – what a mistake with
puppies.
It was very rough terrain in
certain places.
Especially when we went
down by the water.
Esa was just pulling
like crazy the whole time – not very safe when everything is damp!
We were trying for an Earth Cache down by the water, but we
couldn’t figure out what “knobs” were and what “slab” we were supposed to be
at. So we decided to go back up – it was
hard enough getting down. Esa decided to
make a jump up the slab and slid back down into the water between two slabs –
That’s all we need, for Esa to sprain a leg.
Then of course, Zed does the same thing.
Luckily, I grabbed his harness as he was sliding backwards, because he
probably would ended up between the two slabs.
After that, we decided to just stay as close to the trail as
possible. We went a little farther and
decided to turn around – it was just too hard with the pups. So we went to the Kettles side. Much easier!
We started down the path and found one geocache – you could
see it plain as day from the path – too obvious. No camouflage or anything. Dan got it while I “tied” the pups up on a
down tree and got them some water.
On to the next one – we decided to go towards the lookout
instead of the kettles – bad choice. The
geocache that was hidden at the lookout had a lot of DNFs (did not finds) and
no real clues in the logs. We tried our
best, but gave up. We walked a little
further and decided to turn around. It
was about 1pm (about 2 hours into the trip).
Esa was getting tired – she was actually laying down when we
stopped. Still – Esa kept pulling
though!
We got back to the car and both of the pups crashed. Dan decided to keep the GPS on while driving
back and when we got close to one (in a cemetery in Warsaw), we stopped and he jumped out and got
it. Then we just drove straight home.
It doesn’t sound like we did a lot of walking, but my
pedometer said 7,777 steps (about 2.2 miles) plus the terrain – it was a good
workout! Overall, it was a good
trip. The pups had so much fun going up
the stones, jumped crevasses, looking down crevasses, and just sniffing
around. I felt I looked down more than
up and around when we were moving – afraid I would slip. Still it was fun.
Tomorrow we are going to a regular park, so it should be
much easier terrain.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Geocaching
Today, we went to Jackson Park.
We went there 2 years ago for
geocaching.
There were 4 caches that we
wanted to find.
We found 3 out of the
4.
By the 4
th, everyone was
tired.
We walked about 2 miles – this
time easier terrain. Most of the time anyway.
We started on the wrong side of the water, so had to skip rocks to
cross.
Zed wasn’t really into it, so I
had to pick him up and carry him over.
We chatted with a couple with their 11 wk old puppy –
actually a couple of times since we kept crossing paths.
Weather
Well, we are back to hot and humid again.
Monday night, with the storms, it ended up
being really nice yesterday.
Luckily,
there are a lot of fans here!
Oh, we did
lose power for about 10 seconds again on Monday night.
There were storms all around us.
Book Review – “The
Lake Shore Limited” by Sue Miller
This was a book that was given to me by one of my managers
at the airport.
It was an advanced
reader edition and probably something I wouldn’t have bought.
It was a good summer read.
Different chapters were based around each character and how their lives
intertwined/the relationships that they had with each other.
The main story was about Billy, a playwright and how she
wrote stories about her life. The main
play in this story was about her boyfriend that she lost in 9/11, BUT she was
going to breakup with him, so she had mixed feelings on how she felt about his
dying and how she should act.
This is actually the first story I have read that mentioned
9/11. Weird how history can be used in a
novel and you wonder if this really touched home with someone. First of all, if you lost someone in 9/11 and
truly missed them, would you dislike this book?
Secondly, what if someone was in the predicament that Billy was in and
not know how to react?
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Weather (again)
It’s so FREAKING hot here – it’s crazy!
When we checked on Friday, it said it was
going to be in the 70s/80s – nope – more like high 90s.
We both feel really bad for the pups – at
least we can go to a/c places – they won’t even get into the water to cool off.
Shopping
Today we went shopping at Walmart, got more bottled water,
grabbed some crazy tasting potato chips (ketchup, General Tso’s, Buffalo Wings
and Bleu Cheese, and Ballpark Hot Dog) along with onion and ketchup flavored
Doritos.
I had talked about the ketchup
ones at work and wanted to bring some back.
We bought a bag of Buffalo Wings and Bleu Cheese on Sunday for us and
let me say – they taste like the real thing!
The plan was to stop at McDonald’s and use the wi-fi. Unfortunately, we couldn’t connect and it was
so busy that we couldn’t get anyone’s help.
So much for getting a little connected while here! We’re just going to wait until we get home.
Going home early?
We might head out tomorrow depending on the weather.
This is just crazy hot and we both can’t get
comfortable plus feel really bad for the pups.
This sucks – we are both having a relaxing time, just
uncomfortable with the heat. So, we are
going to check the weather/news and make a decision. If so, then we will just drive half way
tomorrow and then the rest of the way on Saturday.
Book Review –
“Mennonite in a Little Black Dress” by Rhoda Jensen
I had seen this book in the bookstore and put it on my TBR
(To Be Read) list on paperbackswap.com.
I was able to pick it up at the Loudoun County Public Library book sale
a few weeks ago.
I really enjoyed this book.
It was sort of like the storytelling idea. It was based on today, but then had stories
from her childhood. It was also great
that at the end of the book she had a little Mennonite “history lesson” so that
the reader could understand a little bit better the religion and lifestyle.
Anyway, it gave me some ideas for storytelling. Basically when something today happens that
reminds you of something that happened when you were a child (or later).
Friday, July 22, 2011
Last day of vacation – luckily, it hasn’t been too hot
today.
It’s about 80 degrees out, but
really no humidity.
I just got a text
saying that it’s going to be 102 degrees at home.
OK!
We
made out today!
We have just been hanging out at the cottage and Dan is
going to go get a few geocaches locally (it’s like 2 pm). I’m going to pack and clean a little then hang
out and read.
Book Review – “The
Nobodies Album” by Carolyn Parkhurst
This is another book that one of the managers at work gave
me.
It’s another advanced reader that
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have bought if it wasn’t given to me.
It’s basically a story about re-writing an ending of a
story. It had several endings of
different books (that the main character in the story had written) with the
revised ending. One thing that I thought
about is Parkhurst would have had to thinking of XX number of stories to put in
this one novel! That’s just crazy!
It was a good summer read.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Home!
What a long drive home yesterday, but we both figured that
since our layover going to
Canada
wasn’t that great, we might as well keep driving.
Both pups did really well.
It did take a while to get Esa in the car after the lunch stop, but
that’s not that bad since we stopped at least 4 times.
The worst part was at the 1000 Island Bridge
and the border. It took us an hour to pay
the toll, get over the bridge and get through customs.
We stopped at McDonald’s for lunch in Whitney Point, NY and
had a picnic. There was a geocache about
200 ft away, so he went and got it while the pups and I hung out on the
blanket.
We finally got home around 9 pm. We just emptied the car and relaxed a little
then I went to bed.
Today, EVERYONE slept
in – I did until about 9 am. Esa was
just so exhausted that she is just laying around today. I unpacked everything and took a nice long
shower. It felt nice to have clean water
and not lake water.
We went to the movies to see Harry Potter. Great movie.
I’ve never read the books, so the story was all new to me.
