At "Home" Again

Yes, we are at "home" again - the motel we always stay in when we come back into the Springs, to acclimate before we head to higher ground.

I have so much I want to write about!! Hopefully I'll have more time tomorrow or the next day. We leave on either Monday or Tuesday for our Eastern trip. Time is flying by and I'm usually too tired to write in the evenings. However, maybe as we drive east (where there is less to see in my opinion), I'll be able to write as we drive. Not sure - 75mph down the interstate is not always conducive to writing. We'll see.

For now, a couple photos from today (oh man - when am I going to get time to write about Zion National Park???!!!!).

We drove from Richfield, UT to Craig, CO yesterday. Wow - how can that just be yesterday?? Surely it was a couple days ago! But no - yesterday. We went to Craig because that is where my brother lives and we wanted to surprise him. We were in that area because we wanted to go up to Cheyenne to get my Bible. Yea! They found it at the church! Yea!

We did surprise Wayne. I was afraid maybe his clinic would be closed, but he and 3 of his employees were still there, as well as someone else. It was fun - we walked in, saw him sitting over in a corner of the waiting room talking to the other person, and just stood and waited while chatting with his receptionist/bookkeeper. We had come in through the employees door, but we didn't know that. Wayne looked up, saw us standing there and did the classical double-take. :-) After chatting awhile, he invited us and two of his employees and the mother of one of the girls to go to dinner. So, we all drove over to a Chinese place, sat around a big table, talked and ate and enjoyed our time. We spent the night there in Craig. This morning we went back over to his clinic to say goodbye and I took a few photos. He was in surgery: , spaying and neutering 2 cats and 3 dogs. His dog, Charlotte, was there as usual and I had fun kicking a tennis ball for her to chase. Charlotte is camera shy, though. The minute I got out the camera, she took off and didn't come out until Wayne finished and called her. Then she was 'shy' until I put the camera away. I've never seen a camera shy dog before! We couldn't stay long because we had to be in Cheyenne by 4:30, so we said goodbye and took off up the road.

We lost count of the number of dead deer along the road between Craig and I-70 in Wyoming. Oh my gosh! Well over 30. Carcasses on both sides of the road, some almost just hide and bones, others fresh, and one where the blood on the highway was still bright red. We also saw at least one elk and Mel saw a dead coyote. The only good thing about all the dead deer was the eagles we saw feeding on them. Bald eagles and either young bald eagles or golden eagles - maybe both. The following 3 photos are of one that actually stayed and watched us while Mel changed batteries in his MP3 player and I took several photos, using telephoto on my new camera. Wow! It's been awhile since I've seen an eagle this close. We know others were bald eagles because their heads were shiny white. Beautiful creatures! You can also see a raven and a magpie in one of the photos. There were dozens of maggies and ravens everywhere.



Finally we got to I-70 and this is what we ran into: High winds and ground blizzards for almost 100 miles. The speed limit was down to 65mph and I'm glad. The wind really rocked the car on some of the hills. Wyoming in this area is like this, so we were not surprised.

We had a nice talk with the pastor of the church there in Cheyenne. Then he invited us to go out with his wife and 3 kids to get some dinner. I don't remember meeting his family before, so this was a nice treat for us.

And now - now we are "home" and I'm ready for bed.