My favorite things about camping

One of my favorite things about all of our camping trips is seeing every minute of every day outdoors. Seeing the rose colored sunset light against the red rock makes the colors glow...

Seeing the sun set on a distant horizon...

Then watching dusk fall and the first stars start to sparkle...

And then, in the dead of night, waking up and seeing the stars overhead. In case anyone else loves the Milky Way like I do, it is alive and well!

When living indoors, it feels too cold and like too much trouble to go outside at 3AM to look for the Milky Way. And, in many places, there's too much light pollution to see it. When camping in the desert, I soak it up.

Happy Springtime Saturday!

A Desert Sojourn

We just returned from a sojourn in the Utah desert. It was mostly peaceful and relaxing. We managed to miss one of the big heavy spring snowstorms here in Colorado. That made me smile. The best spring snowstorms in Colorado are the ones when I'm away in the desert!

I'll keep this post brief but two wonderful things hit us while we were in the desert sunshine. One was that R was running a lot and very fast but he didn't limp once. We could never discern any hitch in his stride.

The vets told us that it took a year to get the full benefit of CUE surgery. Now I believe it. I'm so grateful that we did it, and we gave him these pain-free days of romping. Every day, week, month, and year of a dog's life is precious, and we feel as if we managed to get him more fun time in his life through CUE surgery.

The second great thing was that Shyla seemed to return toward normal, with the side effects of the phenobarb reaching a level that I'd call acceptable. I can still see a bit of a deficit in her spunk and endurance but it's small price to pay for controlling her seizures. She had no seizures on our trip despite a couple of stressful days and the general stress of traveling.

She also reached some peace with wearing boots - a miracle!

As for her recovery from being belted by the evil woman out on our trails, Shyla seems to have concluded that women on trails are scary. She won't approach any women on trails, even ones who she knows. If a woman appears, Shyla hides. In contrast, she will greet men, as long as they aren't paying attention to her - which is exactly how she dealt with all people on the trails before she was hit by that evil woman.

I hope that we never see that woman again. It turns out that Shyla isn't her only canine victim, and the neighborhood is tightening its borders to make sure that the evil woman doesn't trespass again to get into the little sanctuary behind our houses.

Now, I am excited to be able to visit my friends' blogs. We had no cell service for most of our trip so I've been away for too long!

Wordless Wednesday - Desert Finale

Ready for takeoff

Up, up and away!

Shyla gallops across "Shyla's Mesa"

R works the cavalettis - Doesn't every campsite have cavalettis?

Workout done, R was back on duty guarding camp.

Shyla and some "Prince's Plumes"

A stalk of Prince's Plume Blossoms

A single flower on a Prince's Plume

Sunset Light on my Girl

Final evening in a rugged campsite

The Desert Trip - Like Visiting Mars

Back to our desert trip - After a few days at K's Rock, we moved onto another beloved campsite. We found this site more than a decade ago but it's become popular since then. We always try to choose very "unpopular" dates and days of the week to visit it now. We did that perfectly this time!

This was the view from our campsite. As you can see, we ran into some storms during our first couple of days there.

Any running in this area requires boots for dogs due to slickrock and cacti. It was a little sad to see only one set drying on the boulder because R wasn't running.

As you can see, Shyla was running pretty happily in this set of Ultrapaw boots (a gift from Lily and Edward - Thank you!).

However, somehow, she shed her hind boots when I wasn't looking. I searched and searched and searched - and I found one of the two lost ones.

Despite the never-ending boot struggle, Shyla and I had fun on our mountain bike rides. It's like riding a bike on Mars because the terrain is so alien. (This photo was pre-boot-loss).

Of course, R was recuperating from surgery so he stayed around camp all the time. He seemed to soak up the sun like a lizard as he relaxed.

We enjoyed looking at the petroglyphs near our campsite. It is upsetting, however, to see the vandalism grow by the year. The "Joh..." in the right is obviously not ancient.

The sunsets at this site are sublime. I discovered the amazing sunset light here first with Angel K. The tradition of sunset photos of my chocolate lab has continued with sweet Shyla. There's something about chocolate fur, red-orange rocks, and sweet eyes that melts my heart.

The sunlight turned a deeper red as sunset approached.

No doubt, we'll be visiting this site again in the fall. We have some "sneaky" plans to try to visit when it should be deserted, like it was on this last trip.

When we moved to Colorado many years ago, I had no idea that we'd fall in love with the desert. But we have. Desert time is a highlight of every year!

Nighttime in the Desert

We saw some intriguing and beautiful flowers in the Utah desert. It was a wetter spring than most recent years so the colors were incredible, like in this cactus bloom!

The intriguing flowers were part of the "Four O'Clock Family", which includes flowers that close during the day to preserve moisture and open at night. Here was one example. It looked like a cluster of little white balls during the day.

As the sun was setting...

... and I was taking sunset photos of Shyla...

 ... the little balls were opening up so that they could be pollinated by Sphinx Moths. The blossoms were gorgeous, especially with the dark background. It was hard to believe that this was the same plant as I'd seen during the day!

Another flower in that family was called the "Showy Four O'Clock Flower". It was closed during the heat of the day. This photo was just as it was closing in the morning.

Then, around sunset, the "showy" blossoms opened in all their glory!

It's a flower that needs lots of rain to flourish so we haven't seen it in recent years.

So, on those moonlit nights when the stars spun around the North Star, flowers were blooming under the incredible desert sky.

I found the Four O'Clock flowers to be gloriously beautiful and fascinating!!! What a cool trick for surviving in the dry and hot climate of the desert!



Today, I am joining Dory's Flower Blog Hop!

A Peaceful Desert Sojourn

In one way, our recent desert trip was different from most of our trips. R wasn't allowed to walk for longer than 10 minutes at a time. Moreover, we are not comfortable with leaving a dog alone in camp, even inside the van.

Because we didn't want to skip the trip, we took a "tag team" approach to recreation. The Runner would get out early for a desert run. That suited him because he doesn't like running in warm weather.

After he returned from his run, Shyla and I would head out for a mountain bike ride. After an entire winter of riding my snow bike that has tires almost 5" wide, my regular mountain bike felt so nimble and fast!

From K's Rock, Shyla and I headed to a lookout point that we visit every time we camp in this spot. It's a long climb to get to the cliff-side view down at the desert floor - about an hour and twenty minutes of climbing straight up a rocky hillside.

When we first arrived at the top, we had it to ourselves. Look at how confident and proud Shyla looked when sitting at the top!

I took some photos of the beautiful view. Look at the red cliffs and towers in the distance.

Me and my girl, sitting on a 2000' cliff!

I just can't get over how relaxed Shyla is in so much of life now (as long as it doesn't involve a city or crowds!). She's a wonderful trail dog. I love sharing adventures with her!

Soon, our peaceful respite atop the cliff came to a crashing end. A group of rowdy kids arrived, and they started throwing things off the cliff. I couldn't bear to watch, and I feared that Shyla might bolt out of my grasp to try to chase what they were throwing. I also feared for anyone hiking at the base of the cliff. We bolted back down the hill!

As soon as we arrived back in camp, I'd work on PT exercises with R (he had 3-5 sessions per day plus 5 short walks per day), and the Runner would be free to go climb on the boulders while I puppy-sat. I was perfectly happy to take care of R and snooze in the warm sun for the afternoon!

We always took one of R's 10 minute walks just before sunset, and we'd sit at a small vista point for a little while. That's the slender west end of K's Rock behind him.

Then, Shyla and I would wait for those last few minutes before sunset so I could get my "golden" photos of her, where her fur glowed red in the setting sun.

We decided not to travel too much from one campsite to another so that R could just relax and heal. We stayed at K's Rock for a few days before moving on, settling into a routine of running/biking, R's PT exercises, and plenty of snoozing. 

It was approaching a full moon so I took the opportunity on one of the first nights when the moon had already set to capture star trails in a very dark sky. Later in the trip, all my star photos included the bright light of a full moon. That's K's rock in the photo.

It was a great trip! Tomorrow, I hope to share photos of some of the amazing flowers we saw!

Desert Beauty

On this Memorial Day, I am sifting through our photos from the desert, feeling so thankful for those who fought to keep our country safe. Today's peace and beauty is thanks to them.

It sometimes seems simply unbelievable to me that we have such abundant public lands where we can camp, hike, and ride bikes in solitude. Most of all, we can enjoy the gorgeous world around us.

We didn't arrive at our first campsite for our desert trip until after midnight. The moon, at about half full, was just setting into some low clouds on the western horizon. Despite the late hour, I pulled out my camera to try to capture the beauty.

After the moonlight had totally disappeared, the Milky Way glowed. Here was one end of it.

And here was the other end of it. I need to get a super-duper wide angle lens (like 8mm) so that I can shoot wide panoramas that can show the whole Milky Way in one frame. I guess that I could also learn to stitch together multiple frames but I don't have much patience for futzing with photos on my computer.

Needless to say, I was already grinning when I finally climbed into bed, despite how tired we all were after the long drive. We slept in the next morning, loving that wonderful feeling of multiple weeks of vacation ahead of us. As soon as we went outside in the morning, we knew it was going to be a special visit. More desert flowers were blooming than any other time I can remember. Endless cacti sported brilliant flowers.

Many other flowers were blooming too but I'll save them for a future post.

The sun was shining but it wasn't hot. Shyla and I had a blast playing in the desert rocks.

And we all watched the sun set at the end of the day in almost the same spot as where the moon had set the previous night.

Mother Earth is more beautiful than I ever imagined when I was growing up in a more urban setting. I'm glad that we found our way westward, landing in such an incredible part of the country that suits us so perfectly.

A Desert Escape

We snuck away for a couple of weeks in the warmth and sun of the desert.

Flowers were blooming and the sun was shining! It snowed at home so I was beyond thrilled to be in the desert. By May, I am done with winter.

While we camped, we spent lots of time every day working on R's rehab, and he's progressing beautifully. Even our vet (who we saw today) agrees. I'll post a more detailed update on him soon, including video of his much better looking gait. Just so I don't get your hopes up too much, he still limps but it's much better than the last video I showed you!!!

I am glad that I'll be settling back into a normal blogging routine after we get settled back in at home. Thanks for bearing with us!