driving all over the place

Sunday was an exciting day. It started out around 4:30am with me wondering why the little white object next to my bed with the numbers on it was hollering at me. That was my alarm clock of course, but I'm so out of it in the morning that I often don't recognize it as a clock. It's a thing with numbers, and it yells and screams (actually it just beeps, but my scrambled brain doesn't hear it that way so early in the morning). So after a few minutes I finally figured out what was going on and commenced the getting up process. By 5:45 I'd caught all 52 birds and loaded them into the minivan, and off I went. I arrived at the auction yard at 6:37, and was 7 cars back in a line to drop off birds. By the time I left, there were at least 10 more cars behind me. That's a LOT of birds! I hope the prices aren't too awful.

So I got back home at 8, fed all the critters, and then my friend J picked me up at 9. (As a privacy thing, I'm not going to write people's names in here). I wasn't sure where all we'd be going. We started out in the town of Jackson for breakfast, and then went to Sutter Creek to look at gallery where someone J knows had some work showing. I ended up asking about getting my own stuff into the gallery, and may try that after Draft Horse Classic (late Sept). If I submit work before then I'd just have to get more things framed, and that's so expensive I really try to avoid it.

We left Sutter Creek and took some back roads out to the highway (J knows the area quite well. I, lacking a sense of direction, was utterly lost for most of this trip). After one stop to look at riding trails along the way, we ended up at Silver Lake and learned that they do indeed have horse camping and trails there. Perhaps when Shylah is a little older that will be something fun to do! It was really pretty there, such a change to get out of this stiflingly hot valley. Pine trees, rocks, mountains, lakes! And the smell, wow! I know, it's just pine trees, but I haven't been in the mountains for ages and it just totally brought back memories of camping as a little kid (not that those are all good memories...but anyway). Here is a pic from Silver Lake:


Now I had thought that was the extent of our trip, since it was all I had known we were going to do. But...J is very spontaneous (unlike me) so we kept going. We stopped at Kirkwood, which is a ski resort, though obviously there isn't any snow at this time of year so it was pretty much empty other than some people around who I guess were maybe hiking or something. And then we kept going--drove past Caples Lake, and then stopped at Woods Lake to see where a particular hiking trail was located. Woods Lake was beautiful. It was much smaller than Silver Lake. Here are pics from Woods Lake:




And then we kept going. We stopped at some cute little resort area to poke around, and then J said that if we were going home we'd go back thataway, but as long as we were there, Nevada was just over the mountains, and she said that's "real cowboy country" and therefore I needed to see it. I will have to remember that for future reference. ;-)

As we dropped down out the pine trees, everything changed. It turned into sage brush and open space. The transition was so sudden!


Driving into Nevada.

We drove around that part of Nevada a little (mind you I had NO idea I was going to end up in Nevada...) and I must say I am bit disappointed in the lack of cowboys that were visible at that particular time. I did see lots of cows and horses, and pickup trucks, so I guess all the cowboys must have been in their trucks. Oh well. I actually liked it there though...


Nevada...would have looked even better with a bunch of cowboys and horses out in that field...


So long Nevada!

We left Nevada and headed back up the mountains, and when we got to the other side, there was Lake Tahoe! Wow! (did I mention I'm geographically challenged...and totally lost most of this trip?) I didn't get any lake pics because we didn't stop there, just headed back toward home, stopped for dinner, and got back here around 9. I was sooooooo tired, but it was really a fun trip! A nice break from sitting around here drawing chickens every day... ;-)