Lyla and her nose remember

Emma and I have returned from a “walk” in the woods – for us it was a more of a race, up and down our steep hills, splashing through streams, crunching in the fallen leaves – and as usual when we returned to the warmth of our house we fell dead asleep. Fif (Friend I Follow) was stretched out on the couch drinking a potent-smelling tea and reading a book. I heard her mention to Ef (Emma's Friend) later that evening that my feet were still running as I dreamed in front of the cozy fire.

Here's Emma (on the left) and me taking a short break.

But it wasn’t rabbits or squirrels I was chasing in my dreams. It was memories from last summer. My feet probably were twitching because much of the trip I was pretty agitated. But I’ve already described how there were strange dogs and new dog smells everywhere we went and how much they disturbed my sense of well-being. What I may not have mentioned yet was some of the other amazing and sometimes disturbing smells, sounds and sensations.

The very first night we stayed in a motel where we had to get in a very small room before we arrived at our room with the bed. Fif pushed a button on a wall and suddenly my tummy shifted violently as the floor of the tiny room pushed at my feet. Later, when we went back outside, we had to enter the tiny room again and this time my tummy went up to my backbone and for just an instant I thought my feet had left the floor. I actually handled all this very well, particularly as there were strange people pressed all around and I surely didn’t want to upchuck on anyone’s shoes, especially since they kept telling me and Fif how beautiful I was. So I put on my best grin and after two or three times got quite used to the funny sensation.

Fif and me and my incredible nose.

It appears that humans cannot smell, see or hear much of what we dogs do. For example, I could smell where all the people who were in that tiny room that lurched my tummy had been that day. But, I could also smell where they had been for the past several days. The  odors coming from their shoes was quite overwhelming, but their clothing also reeked of everything from food smells to gasoline to other people and things they had come close to in the past few days. I could pick out big random odors of dogs, suitcases, car tires (which smell of much more than rubber) and so forth. But since I can smell thousands of times better than a human I could also smell, for example, if a certain human’s suitcase contained clean clothes and/or dirty clothes. If the clothes were clean I could tell if they had been washed in detergent with or without fragrance. If they were dirty (much more interesting) I could tell if they had food stains, had been worn on the beach, fishing or horseback riding. I could tell if the person had had sexual relations recently or been smoking. And on and on.

I don’t mess around with computers, but here is something Fif said to have my readers refer to if you want to learn more about how my world while traveling was so overpoweringly full of smell.

(This article is by Peter Tyson, former editor in chief of Nova Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html. Alexandra Horowitz’s book, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know is cited in the article. That book went with us on our journey last summer and was referred to many times.)

Here are just a few of the big and little smells I encountered during our six-and-a-half week’s journey:

Water– lakes (some so big I couldn’t see across them); streams, rivers (both dry and flooded); ponds; lakes; puddles; the salty ocean (which I wasn’t too thrilled about); rain; snow; and water with lots of different chemical stuff in it in motels, houses and restrooms.

This was Shell Lake in Wisconsin and in the direction I'm looking we were told that
black bears had been romping on the beach a couple of nights previously.
Do you think I could smell them?

Food – this of course is a huge category, but some highlights include the delicious smells of food Fif was eating and I usually got to sample (I even got my own personal hamburger on a number of occasions); items I consider food but Fif steered me away from, such as cow and horse poop at a fairgrounds where we walked; odors of food wafting down motel hallways or seeping through walls from the units around us; and smells of my dry dog kibble, which wasn’t all that appealing until about the third day on the road.

Air – I would venture to say that humans don’t pay much attention to the smell of air, unless it is really bad air. But to a dog air is the avenue to every other odor. There is the smell of indoor air and outdoor air, the smell of air that has traveled over water and air that has come from mountains and from forests and across deserts. Sometimes air smells of impending storms. The air in our van had vast and enormous smells and I even heard Fif say she was getting sick of the smell of moldy bread and dirty clothes. Several times I got to smell museum air. In one museum there was a “man” dressed in a military uniform. After he didn’t move even when I put my nose on his leg I realized he wasn’t a real human. But the clothes he wore had been somewhere very scary. I could smell human fear on the clothes, which I could also tell were very old.

People – every single human I’ve ever seen or met has a unique smell. That is why if I get separated from Fif on a woods walk at the farm I can easily pick out her trail and find her in a flash. She says she has watched me track her and even when I’m in sight of her I don’t look up, just keep my nose to the ground and fly along. I at least attempt to catalog people smells and that really took some doing as we traveled. No sooner would I store away a smell than we would be on the road and never see that person again. Sometimes, though, we would stay somewhere a couple of days and I was much happier because my smell memory could be useful.

Dogs – as mentioned before, they are without number. And, as with people, each has a distinct odor. The only two dogs I got to continue an association with after first smell was when we visited a family in Bakersfield. At first when I was let loose in a small back yard with very tall walls I criss-crossed the yard at top speed, frantically sucking up thousands of smells. I even ran across (only once) a very spongy thing that later turned out to be a tarp across a swimming pool. Since we were there for three days I eventually just got very curious about the other two dogs who obviously lived there. I wanted to meet them (and then decide whether to eat them or just be friends), but I wasn’t scared of them like I was of so many others. Unfortunately, Fif and her friends decided not to risk an encounter (something about one dog being old – I knew that – and the other being small – I knew that too.

These children are searching for prairie dogs in a "town" the critters built in a park in
North Dakota. Their homes are in holes -- I could have shown them exactly where to look!

Other animals – again, without number. Some were very familiar – raccoons, skunks, opossums, snakes, and so forth. When we camped at a big lake the ranger warned Fif not to let me loose because there were porcupines. She showed us a photo of a dog with hundreds of quills in his poor nose – I bet that nose had some smelling issues for awhile. At one motel there were wild bunnies everywhere. I could not only smell them constantly, but I could smell where their dens were and tell you how many babies were hunched inside. At another motel many elk grazed all night on the lawn in front. I was particularly interested in their droppings, but again wasn’t allowed to taste. Once while we were walking alone in a forest I stopped in my tracks and stared into the top of some trees. I didn’t bark, but was VERY quiet. Of course Fif looked up too and she quickly realized what I already knew. Something very big and black had been there pretty recently. We made a quick trip back to the van.

Motel rooms – loaded with odors! Humans and dogs and all the foods they eat, all the things they carry or wear, all the things they do. Because we always stayed in rooms other dogs had inhabited, some odors were so strong even Fif commented on them. The first two or three nights I had a great urge to pee on the carpet where others had committed the same sin. This, despite the fact that I have NEVER used our house for a bathroom. Fif reprimanded me sternly about that urge. Eventually, she got the idea to spray each room with some smelly stuff, saying it covered up the odors. Well, for her maybe it did. For me it just added another layer.

This is when we visited the cemetery at Shell Lake
Wisconsin, looking for Fif's great-grandmother's grave.
We did not find it but you can tell I enjoyed this outing!

Random things – graveyards – we visited many, as Fif realized they are usually vacant and great for walks. You would be amazed at what odors I smelled there! At one I was tempted to do some digging next to a headstone, but Fif blocked that impulse. Long roads in the countryside where we walked were very rich in odors, from fertilizers for the fields to birds flying around, to corn and wheat and hay growing, to myriad small creatures burrowing and climbing and crawling. I even took time to stop and smell the flowers.

A restaurant in Kansas

Although my plan was to go back over our summer’s journey chronologically, I find that some stories float to the top and compel setting “to paper” more immediately.

I soon realized as I traveled that there are small stories that are just as necessary to tell as some that more in-depth interviewing/research can produce. In fact, as a journalist observer I believe that at times simply observing without inserting a third party (me) can produce a fairly accurate portrayal. (And, as it works out, this can be suitable for a person such as me who is actually shy under some circumstances.)

Toward the end of our trip, Lyla and I were travelling on back roads through the eastern part of Colorado and into west Kansas. Finally, the weather had cooled enough that I could occasionally stop at a restaurant and safely leave Lyla in the car. Although this particular off-the-beaten-track restaurant advertised home-cooked food, all I really remember about the meal is that I can’t recall at all what I ordered and that it was not very tasty. In fact, it was one of the rare times that I didn’t take a bit of leftovers (which I always have) out to Lyla because I didn’t think it would be good for her.

But I truly wasn’t all that interested in the food. I was far more interested in hanging out near the “real” people of the west, which can be done best in local restaurants. I seated myself in a booth with a good view of the entryway. In front of me was a couple dining with an older man and they seemed to be discussing local topics. Unfortunately, it was a busy time in the restaurant and a bit difficult to hear more than a few snatches of conversation about water supplies and the price of gas.

Near my booth was a young soldier dressed in military garb accompanied only by his cell phone, which made for a lively texting companion.

Then, to my delight, in strode an authentic-looking cowboy with leather chaps, a whiskery face obviously impacted by weather and maybe a few headfirst tumbles from a horse, and of course, the cowboy hat. He joined a few others in a booth around a corner, so I never got more than a couple of glimpses. I did see him leave in a beat-up-looking pickup truck that fitted his obvious western lifesyle, however.

Distracted by these colorful characters I didn’t at first pay much attention to another scene unfolding. I saw the front door open and a neatly-dressed young black man struggled to push in a baby stroller with a tiny infant swaddled inside. With him was another black man with a child who was perhaps five years old. Neither of the men were older than mid-20s and it was a bit unusual to see such young fellows shepherding two youngsters, especially the infant. In my imagination I saw them as young husbands giving their young wives an afternoon off by taking the kids out for a meal.

I feel I need at this point to say that this thin slice of several people’s lives may or may not actually portray reality. But my gut feeling is that this fleeting glimpse of interaction (perhaps 15 or 20 minutes) revealed an all-too-common interplay that perpetrates an abiding feeling of unfairness and contributes in small and great ways to far-reaching and long-lingering racial tensions.

The young man with the infant parked the baby’s stroller next to their table just as a restaurant employee approached with a rolling cart on which dirty dishes were stacked. She gave the young men a glare and muttered that the stroller was in her way. While the aisleway was not wide enough for both vehicles, the tone in the employee’s voice was neither polite nor welcoming. The man with the infant glanced up with a perfectly expressionless face to see that no quarter was to be given, no assistance offered, no “I’m sorry, but it might be better to park the stroller elsewhere.”

No words were exchanged between the customer and the employee, but the black man looked away, seemed to be contemplating how to fix the situation and then arose and awkwardly removed a carrier that was part of the stroller. He carefully placed the carrier with the sleeping infant on the booth bench and began to maneuver the stroller back down the aisle and through the double doors. No one offered an assisting hand and after he bumped the stroller back down steps he folded it into a car and quietly re-entered the restaurant.

A server appeared, gave a perfunctory greeting, tapped a foot while waiting for the five-year-old to decide between French toast and a sandwich and disappeared with their order. Even the child seemed subdued, as though without being told, knew he was in a place where acceptance was really just barely tolerance. The infant slept on in a blissful ignorance that might last a few more months.

Now I’ve been in restaurants and other public places where the sight of a wee one catches glances and frequently comments such as “what a cute baby,” or some such. That did not happen here. After being served the four were not looked at or spoken to, although I suspect they were noticed. I am ashamed to say that even I, sitting directly across from this young family, did not say some encouraging, civil word to them. One struggles with the thought that, as equal human beings and citizens, all people deserve the respect from others to not feel an obligatory comment should be made. On the other hand, civilized people often speak civilly to complete strangers. I know that I do. But I didn’t this day. And it may have made no difference at all if I had. But then again, maybe it would.

Throughout my trip I wrestled with the notion of going to Ferguson, Missouri, where the unarmed black man Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer after being stopped for questioning about a nearby robbery. Racial tensions throughout the country rose during the next year, with spotlights on other fatal shootings of blacks by white police officers, including that of a 12-year-old black boy in Cleveland, Ohio who was “armed” with a toy pistol. I wanted to see for myself what the streets of Ferguson looked like a year after the shooting. In the end I drove by on the interstate, a scant 10 miles north of Ferguson, snatching glimpses of the dark skyline. It was one of the few times I did not live up to a challenge I set for myself and I told myself I backed out partly because there was no safe place to leave Lyla – I could not take her on the streets because of her aversion to and likelihood of attacking another dog.

I truly am at a loss as to what one white woman can accomplish. I can say that I am (as are many, many others of all skin hues) appalled that in the year 2015 – 150 years after the American Civil War ended – the origins of one’s biological background can cause hate, divisiveness and a lack of common civility.

Thursday, October 1

As I sit at my computer with a blank screen (in the olden days it would have been a piece of paper in my Royal typewriter) I ponder where to start with the new beginning of this blog.

As Lyla and I traveled this summer we had more experiences than it was possible to blog about – instead I have notebooks, digital recordings, scraps of paper and LOTS of photographs that I now have to sort through and put in some order.

Perhaps some mention of the thought process for a solo journey should be touched upon.

This was not by any means the first time I have traveled alone (sans human-company, that is). When I graduated from Ohio University in 1973 the first thing I did was to give myself the gift of a one-month solo horseback trip. With two horses, a dog and my guitar for company I covered about 350 or so miles of Ohio countryside (for the first week, though, I did convince my 12-year-old son to join me). On the 10^th anniversary of that trip I repeated the horseback journey, this time for 10 days, with the same two horses (unfortunately, by then the dog was long dead). In 1998 and 1999 I traipsed the countryside with two horses and a friend and her horse for a week each summer as we practiced for a planned longer horseback journey that was to take place in 2000 (the partnership for the trip dissolved so I ended up riding and hiking for three days in 2000 with my daughter and grandson).

In 1981 I traveled alone for a month (by car) from Ohio through the Midwest as far as the Four Corners, swinging back by a southern route through Texas and Oklahoma.

During the early 1970s (my college, therefore poorest years) I hitchhiked so much one of my college professors dubbed me “superthumb” after observing me catch a ride in under a minute. Some of those trips included hitchhiking to and through New York City (once to Westport, Connecticut to interview Paul Newman); from Florida to Ohio when I was ditched by a friend; and to Arkansas to stay with an Amish family for a few days (I was planning on accompanying them on a journey across the U.S.—they were to drive a horse and wagon and I would ride sidesaddle on a horse since I would be required to wear a dress).

In 1974 I convinced a Mississippi riverboat company to allow me to ride a towboat for a month to produce a story. I certainly wasn’t alone, but I was the only woman besides the cook aboard. I managed to convince the crew I was a serious journalist and not riding with them to meet guys (eventually I was allowed to work alongside them, painting and cleaning and even—once—allowed to steer the towboat with many chemical barges strung out in front of us).

How did this adventurous side of me originate? Probably because my parents (who I secretly called gypsies) traveled about and moved many times during my early years. By the time I was five we had lived in multiple locations including Columbus and Cleveland Ohio, Tampa, Florida and Yermo, California. I remember long cross-country drives through mountains where Dad would have to stop our 1940s-era car and add water to the radiator. When we moved from Columbus to Yermo in 1946 our vehicle must have looked much like those of the migrants—everything we owned was packed in or on it, with Mom, Dad and two young kids squeezed inside. That was way before seatbelts. My brother Glen and I fought over who got to lie on the shelf of the back window! Mom stuffed the floor on either side of the “hump” (where the transmission passed through the backseat) with bedding or other soft items and that was our bed. When we made our way back to Columbus to live in 1949 we stopped for several months in Phoenix, Arizona. Dad bought a school bus, ripped out the seats and built bins for vegetables. Early each morning he would go to a fresh foods vendor and pick up fruits and vegetables, then run a neighborhood route with them, much as milkmen and breadmen did in that era. The bus was very handy to use for the return trip to Columbus. Mom and Dad simply packed all their stuff, including, by now, four kids, into the vegetable bins. In his usual mode of exaggeration, my husband Don still says I grew up in a vegetable bin.

At age 68 I made my first venture overseas and traveled alone, although I met family on the other side of the ocean. Without knowing more than a smattering of words of Japanese I changed planes in Tokyo to arrive in Nagoya without incident. After several days exploring the country with my grandson and his wife I went to Kyoto by bullet train, spent a night in a ryokan alone and the next day negotiated my way by foot and train to see the Kyoto Imperial Palace, and then eventually to find the right spot in which to meet my grandson.

So with some background in various kinds of travel, I began planning my trip west and felt confident that I would have no trouble traveling alone. But my husband had another idea. He thought it would be best to travel with my six-year-old mixed-breed German Shepherd dog. I loved the idea, but had misgivings on several fronts. Although I had successfully worked with Lyla on basic commands I knew she had issues with being near other dogs (except her packmate, Emma, who came to the farm as an eight-week-old pup). I also knew we would be traveling through some very hot weather and that there would be many places she would not be allowed to enter (restaurants, museums, some park areas). It took months to work through the thought process, the training and the preparation for traveling with a dog. I believe it added at least 50 percent more preparation time and money than if I had not traveled with her. But the dimension she brought to the trip could not be bought with any amount of money. As I continue with the blog I will go into some of the details traveling with a dog requires.

Home again

September 12, 2015

7,702 miles divided by 45 days. That's 171.15 miles a day, although we did not drive every one of those 45 days.

Lyla and I arrived home about 6 p.m. Monday, August 31, and that day we drove right at 400 miles, scoring those miles in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. As John Steinbeck so aptly put it, you know when the journey is over. Our journey was pretty much over in the middle of Colorado, although I tried to make Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana (not to mention Ohio) count. Counting Ohio we visited 20 states.

It was a journey I had dreamed about for four years and with the help of many others was able to make come true. Some -- but not all -- of those others included my husband, Don, who maintained and more our 75-acre farm, the four horses and one mule, eight cats and one sad, left-behind dog, all while driving more than 70 miles round-trip to his day job five days a week; my two helpers, Lorrene and Katelyn, who fed equines five evenings a week (Don arose VERY early every morning to feed them), cleaned the house and our rental cabins and kept other household clocks ticking; the members of our Athens SeniorBEAT program who took photos and kept track of attendance and other program details during my absence; my two incredible hosts/relatives, sister-in-law Irene and her husband John, and brother Don and his wife Vicki, who provided creature comforts to two road-weary creatures along the way; and the dozens of people who I met as I traveled who offered everything from stories, shelter, food and information to an incredible horseback ride in Wyoming. I have to also mention my daughter, Keri, who showed up a day before I left with six wrapped packages, each with a label such as "In case you and Lyla are feeling playful," (a frisbee and unstuffed toy) or, "For when you're feeling HOT!" (a miracle towel that holds cold water for hours). Keri reminded me that when she and her brother, Chris, were children I would have wrapped presents for them to discover as we traveled. I've heard that roles reverse as we age and our children become our caregivers.

As I mentioned this list is not complete. Nor is the story of our journey. I did not anticipate how difficult it would be to drive all those miles; talk with people; stop the car multiple times a day for walking Lyla and taking photos; find new lodging almost every day (sometimes that could take up to an hour); keep track of what I needed to do to help my Ohio family cope; make phone calls, write emails and create two newsletters for the SeniorBEAT program; handle all the bookings (phone calls, emails, etc.) for our cabin rental business, WaterSong Woods; and oh, yes, have fun and see sights and enjoy scenery. And blog.

So the plan is to continue this blog, starting back at day 1 of our travels, as much was left out. I hope to be able to do that about every two weeks. In addition, I plan to begin writing a book. At this time I hope to incorporate this recent journey into a story about other journeys -- both mine and others.

Meanwhile, here are a few photos of our last days on the road.

See the windmills on the horizon stirring in the eastern Colorado breeze?

As we left our motel one morning I caught a glimpse of what looked like several dolphins swimming in a far-off field.

Then we got closer to a rail line that ran parallel to the road and saw the entire train of several dozen flatbed cars hauling these windmill propeller blades.

It was harvest time during our travels and grain silos like these in Kansas were loading up.

Corn was maturing in the fields.

To keep Lyla (and other dogs safe) our long walks were on roads like this one in Colorado.

Where we got to see indications of a very rural life. The mail delivery does NOT come to each and every door, but is delivered to the end of the dirt road where several families live. Notice the parched and cracked dry earth in front of these mailboxes. In the distance a storm was brewing.

Poor, weary Lyla. She was really a wonderful traveling companion!

One lonely white horse in a sea of sage.

Homecoming! We stopped to say hello to our neighbor and helper, Katelynn. Her sister, Courtney, took this photo. Doesn't Lyla look happy?

Making sure little sister, Emma, understands who is still boss.

No more need be said here!

August 28, 2015

Fif is calling me a heroine. If a dog could blush, I might be, but on the other hand, my understanding is that we are to be taking care of each other on this journey. So here is what happened.

After a couple of expensive motel nights on the Oregon coast we drove a bit inland to stay at a cheaper motel. Did I mention that it was cheap? The air conditioner was on a shelf so high that Fif had to get out a stool she brought along and stand on it to reach the controls.

It also had inadequate locks--this photo is from a different motel, but you get the picture...

It was a warm night and as we drove to the exterior door and parked we saw that the occupants of the next room had their door open and were drinking and watching TV. It was three construction-type guys, and they looked pretty rough. They watched Fif carry stuff into our room. Last she unloaded me and as we walked past them one guy said, "look at that big dog!" I kind of puffed up a bit and for once Fif didn't say how much I love people.

About 2 a.m. I could tell Fif was awake and suddenly I sprang to my feet and ran to the door. We both had heard something right outside. Softly Fif called me to her. At first I was reluctant to come away from the door. I sniffed at the bottom and knew someone was right out there, but I turned back and the two of us sat on the floor behind the bed for awhile.

Finally it got quiet and then we heard someone running water in the unit next to us. Fif gave me lots of hugs and said how much I helped her be brave. In the morning we didn't go outside until the workers (who made lots of noise coughing and spitting and swearing for an hour) left.

After we got into California we went to a very special place -- the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.

At first the folks there said I wouldn't be allowed to come inside. But since one of John Steinbeck's stories is about a dog named Charley who took a long trip with his friend and we had come more than 5,000 miles to see his truck Fif really wanted me to be with her. She suggested that sometimes rules are made to be broken (I suspect Steinbeck might have agreed) and a very nice lady said that she loves dogs so that it would be ok.
Here we are posing beside the truck, which was named Rocinate. A boy named Hugo Semel, who was visiting from Paris, France took this photo.

We also visited the Mohave Desert, where the temperature was about 106 degrees. Fif made sure I was only outside early in the morning or in the air conditioned motel room or van. It was morning when we visited the Calico Cemetery where people are buried under piles of stones. Fif lived near here when she was a little girl and remembers playing around the ghost town and the cemetery. She even named her first horse 'Calico.'

I did lots of panting and drank lots of water.

A nice park ranger took this photo.

We also discovered the "siesta." It really is the only way to spend the afternoons in the desert!

We visited Fif's brother, Don and his wife, Vicki, in Mesquite, Nevada. Everyone disappeared for awhile one day while I got to stay in the cool house. When they came home they smelled like creatures I had never smelled before. This armadillo who lives at the Roos-N-More Zoo was one of the critters Fif told me I was smelling.

One of my hosts was CeCee, a 16-year-old cat who actually showed up at our farm in Ohio about 15 years ago and Fif convinced her brother he needed a cat. You can see here that I am being the perfect guest .
CeCee has traveled thousands of miles with Don and Vicki both on airplanes and in cars as they have a home in Kentucky too. Can you believe she actually LIKES traveling? Speaking of traveling, I've noticed the past couple of days that the sun is in our eyes when we start out in the morning. Hmmmm, I sense another change is coming.

Thursday, August 20

Just had to post a couple of happy-looking Lyla photos taken by my sister-in-law, Irene, yesterday in her backyard in Bakersfield. It is amazing what a couple of days of R&R can do for human and canine alike.

August 19, 2015

If it seems our posts have been spaced further apart that would be because they have been. Lyla and I have driven more than 5,000 miles at this date and are both getting a bit road weary. Some days, like the day we visited Mount St. Helens, we drove up and up mountain sides for at least three hours, which meant we also had to come back down mountain sides for almost that same amount of time. I was told that the last 20 miles to the site we visited -- where you can peer straight down at the sad remains of Spirit Lake and see the naked, steaming mountain to the left -- was a gravel road just a few years ago. Today the road is broken asphalt, teetering toward the downhill side of the road, which, if one was brave enough to look at, would probably be a sheer drop of thousands of feet. Have I mentioned I am not a fan of great heights when it involves me standing on them?

Lyla has been a spectacular travel companion, in that she endures the winding, bumpy roads without complaint and has yet to utter, "when will we be there?"

Now we are holed up with relatives in Bakersfield for a couple of days and I can get off a quick post before the next segment of our trip--into the searing Mohave desert. The temperature Monday in Bakersfield was 109 degrees and we are told it may be a tad cooler today, say 104 or so. Now that sounds really bad and it can be, especially, I would think, for the homeless people we have seen on the streets. But the natives who live here know to get outdoor work done early and stay indoors from 10 a.m. to dark. Across from us this morning yard workers were buzzing away loudly with maintenance equipment at 6:30 a.m. and I did not notice anyone complaining. These desert folks remind us, "it is a dry heat." And truly, it isn't that bad out at night. I wonder why more people don't just flip their days around and sleep all day and work and play at night?

Here are a few photos of our days from August 11 to August 15.

Steam continues to vent (lower right in photo) from Mount St. Helens, which erupted explosively May 18, 1980 and blew out the north side of the mountain. The volcanic eruption was the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges and 185 miles of highway were destroyed. The day we visited we could smell a faint odor of smoke, or was it brimstone?

Remarkably, after 35 years, skeletons of dead trees still stand or lay on the forest floor, amid the rebirth of pine trees and flowers. Mount St. Helens is ghostly-looking in the far background.

A crushed and now rusted miner's car is left as part of the memorial to nature's robust ways. Plants and flowers are nourished even by the decaying metals of human endeavors.

We all know our homes are usually built from wood and our "dead tree" books too come from, well, dead trees. But you have to drive through Oregon to appreciate how many trees bleed their sap for our use. In the photo below a hillside begins to recover from timbering.

Logging trucks barrel down two-lane as well as four-lane roads. Beware your back bumper! A motel owner told me the story of his years in the timber business. He said he once cut (and showed me a photo of it) a 600- to 700-hundred-year-old tree whose butt end (when laying sideways on the ground) was eight-feet tall and the length of the tree was 250 feet. "When they (I suppose the government) told me we couldn't cut any more of those big ones, I quit timbering," he said. He also reminded me that timber is a renewable resource. And so it is--right now I can't count how many generations down the road would use that renewable tree that would take 600 years to grow.

Spectacular cloud formations added to our drive on this day.

Along the Oregon coast a vulture swoops over Pacific waves.

Shasta Lake, near Redding California, is the state's third largest body of water after Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea. The red banks exposed in the background reflect the long and severe drought conditions in the state -- the water level should cover these exposed banks. One source said the reservoir contains only about 30 percent of the water it did 10 years ago. When I asked a local employee at the lake how much water it would take to refill the lake, he merely said, "a whole lot!" Then as an afterthought, and in keeping with comments I've heard from other westerners, he added, "but that's just nature at work."

One of the scariest nights we spent was in Douglas, California, while we were trying to reach the redwood forests. A forest fire was burning several miles away and the next town down the road had been evacuated two nights before. We retreated indoors to escape inhaling the thick smoke and the next day had to retrace our route back over mountains the way we had come because of road closures.

Lyla's bane: small dogs and

very large dogs.

Watching from her bed in the van, Lyla scrutinizes the landscape for the presence of dogs. Her animal behaviorist from OSU has helped us through several phone conversations to deal with her fears, which instead of decreasing with daily exposure, have increased. We are trying a new medication to lower her anxiety levels and also continue to work daily on "fun" things, like long walks in quiet places and practicing our obedience commands.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

First off, I have to say this traveling is not exactly all it's cracked up to be. Ok, I am over being carsick, but I am really homesick. I know these are human words, but they actually pretty much convey how I, a dog, feels. At home I have only one dog in my life--Emma--and now I really appreciate her. On the road there are so many dogs that I feel pretty overwhelmed. Not only are there dog smells everywhere Fif and I get out to "relieve" ourselves, but even in the motel rooms I am surrounded by dog smells of every type. To be fair, Fif has come up with some innovative places to stop for a stretch of the legs, but yesterday even in a remote area I swear I heard some kind of barking--maybe a wolf or coyote?

Well, I have no idea if this is to be my life forever, so I'll stop with the whining and show you some of the stuff we've done in the past couple of weeks.

This was the day we drove through Yellowstone National Park. The first photo is actually the very last Fif took that day. In more than three weeks we've only seen rain during the day one day and that is our Yellowstone day. At the end of the day as we came into Montana, the sun was low and the clouds parting. It was one of those days I heard Fif mutter, "I'm stopping one more time for a photo. Sure glad you aren't whining about it like a person would..." Can you see the faint partial rainbow?

The GRAND Tetons were truly magnificent! Or so Fif says.

One of those places we like to stretch our legs. Nice and quiet.

The weather on Yellowstone day was so cool Fif said I could stay in the car while she watched Old Faithful go off. (Sure were lots of people who took their dogs right down to the seating area, which the literature said wasn't allowed. Seems stupid to me to think dogs would like to be where a geyser was spouting.) Anyway, it started raining, which didn't really daunt Fif and some other folks, like the ones in this photo. But then a ranger came along about 10 minutes before Faithful was to blow and said to clear the area because lightening and hail were imminent. Fif ran for the car.

 Now this was actually a fun day. We visited an American Indian cemetery on the Flathead Reservation in Arlene, Montana after talking with a special lady you'll see below. I got to do lots of sniffing and it was a very quiet place.

 Some of the sculptures in the cemetery were really neat.

So far, the only bear we've seen. However, read on for close encounters...

This is Windy Windy Boy and she got that name because she was named Windy (her first name) by her parents. She is part Cherokee Indian and is a general manager at the motel where we stayed. She married a full-blooded Salish Indian named Windy Boy. The tree where Windy is standing is where a mama bear and her cub climbed a couple of years ago. As you can see it is right next to our motel. Windy told Fif that one day she was standing a few feet from this tree and she felt something lick her leg. She reached behind her and patted it on the head, then turned to see it was a bear cub. A few feet behind was mama standing on her hind legs. Windy ducked into the motel. When help came the bears had climbed this tree so the people with the darts had to go to the second floor to reach the bears. Meanwhile, Windy and the other motel employees were very concerned about the bears being hurt when they fell so they gathered up all the (brand-new) pillows in the motel and put them on the ground till they provided a "mattress" about 10 feet in diameter. The bears were not hurt when they fell and were taken back to the wild. Apparently, a forest fire not far away had driven them into town to find food.

Some wildlife in Yellowstone.

And in Packwood, Washington. This handsome male elk was just a few feet behind us while we were eating dinner in a quiet park at the edge of town. We didn't notice him until Fif saw a man taking photos from the highway. She turned to see what he was photographing, gasped, hustled me into the van (leaving behind the food on the table) and got this shot.

Finally, we are as far west as Fif says we are going--the Pacific Ocean in Oregon! I honestly don't know why anyone wants to wade in water that moves and get sand between their toes.

Although the sunset last night was kind of pretty.

And lastly, my friend Emma at home. Where I long to be.