Komments by KADY! Issue #6

Well fans I think we found somewhere else we live for a long time now because we've been here five weeks already and we're not packing up to go anywhere yet.  It's ok because it's a pretty good place for us dogs.

Most of the time it is warm and sunny but sometimes it gets really windy.

There are neighbors and there is lots of interesting stuff going on in the neighborhood.  People have little yards that they work in a lot.

When we first got here my back was hurting but mom went to the vet here that I went to before and got me more metacam.  I like metacam.   It makes me happy.

So I spent a lot of time resting and getting better.  

I help mom work.  She worked a bunch this month which was kind of boring for us dogs.

Sometimes I have to turn out the lights for myself because mom and dad won't turn off the tv and go to bed.

Usually mom and us dogs go to bed before dad and I can have his pillow.

Dora has something to tell you about.

Mom took Dora to the vet that I went to in Desert Hot Springs.  She was gone for a whole day.

And when she came back she had a bad haircut and a zipper.  I told her that it would be ok and all of us girls have zippers.  The Greedy Grandma Alice has had three zippers and even mom had a zipper last year and we give each other therapy.  So Dora got to have some good drugs and she didn't feel like playing either.

I went back to the vet one day last week but I only got a rabies shot for my dog license so that was ok.

And now Dora is all better and I am feeling much better and we can play again.

There is a pretty good dog yard here with toys and room to run and play Dora-bowling and there are sticks to eat.

And sometimes we just lay around outside in our pen.

 

This is a pretty good place to live.  There are lots of other dogs here.  There are a whole bunch of bulldogs and one really fat one rides in a stroller and there is a big German Shepherd that wears a muzzle and tried to fence fight with me and Dora and he is scary we don't like him. There is a black chow mix that visits across the street and next door but we don't play with it. There is a big wolfhound down by the dumpster and I was scared of him at first but he doesn't say anything just looks at us.  And there is even a Pembroke named Baby who lives on our walk between the dog yard and the dumpster and we talk to her.  She is lonesome because her mom only has one corgi and that isn't enough.  And our cousin Teddy lives here with our human grandma too.

I'll write again when something funner happens.

Southwest Skies

We've been working entirely too much: that's the answer.  You can tell that I've had little time to blog in the last month.  I'm going to take a break and get caught up before the news and views get any older.

We were able to take one morning while we were in New Mexico and hit the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta: almost at the end of the Fiesta and almost at the end of the day's flight.

The picture above and below were actually taken from Interstate 25 as we headed north toward the balloon park.  As we drew closer you could see more and more "freckles" in the sky.

Much of our viewing was from the jeep which spent a long time stopped in traffic as balloons were landing around us.

One of my favorites was the Dragon you see below.

The truck two in front of us transporting a gondola back to the park.

A ground crew wrestling the balloon to the ground and walking it to the vehicle.

We also visited the Balloon Museum which was totally worth it.

For our next visit, we will try to stay on the grounds where we can be up early enough to see the ascension.

We had planned to spend longer in New Mexico, but had an appointment to get our slide fixed in Mesa on October 15th.  We made a reservation at Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction for the night before and after the repair was scheduled.  On our way south, Tom thought to call and make sure that the parts had been received.

The answer was, of course, "no".  Yes, they had three weeks.  Let's just say that the person at Thor who was handling it forgot.  The parts were shipped overnight on Wednesday, received on Thursday, and the repair was done on Thursday and Friday, so we were only a couple of days late.

As we were going to need additional (and different) days at Lost Dutchman, our reserved space was not available after the first night.  The hosts and rangers at the park were great: we were given a pull through which is normally a host spot, but was not currently used.

It had a great view of the Superstition Mountains through the windshield.

And this was fine until it was time to come back to the park Friday evening.  We got there and . . . they had accidentally rented our temporarily vacated spot to someone else.  We had paid for it, but being a host site it was not on the normal reservation system.

And the people they had rented it to were not being very nice about choosing another site.

We were offered a refund if we would agree to move to a back-in site the next up the hill (from 18 to 20).   We would have been pleased with a one-night refund for the night we weren't actually using the space (Thursday).  What they gave us was FIVE nights free (!)   

It turns out that 20 was even better than 18 for privacy with the dogs, and for the views.   

We had our own cactus garden, and spent a lot of time taking sunset pictures.

Home sweet (fixed) home.

We decided to stay on at Lost Dutchman for the full two weeks allowed.  Not having reservations, it required a couple of moves, first down to site 58, then back up to 24.

(Click for campground map for reference.)

We are scheduled for another two weeks at Lost Dutchman in December. We now know that the back in sites 20 through 30 are our favorites.  We were able to call and change our reservation from site 45 back to our favorite: site 20.  It will be like going home!

We are now at Two Springs in North Palm Springs until the end of November. The dogs and I are staying here while Tom is off on a trip to Northern California to take care of family matters.  He's also going to make an overnight "home" to Southern Oregon to take back extra things we brought and didn't need, bring back a few things which I've decided we did need (dog dryer, fabric crates, more rope lights), and retrieve our quarterly wine selection from Folin Cellars.