Category Archives: cat’s… both live and dead…

Holy Crap! It’s a Sea Otter!!!

Holy Crap! It’s a Sea River Otter!!!

I was just finishing the last blog posting when Pauline saw this Sea River Otter running across the camp towards the water. I was able to snap off a few decent pictures as the Sea River Otter ran across the road onto the parade ground and over a ledge just as a Bald Eagle was swooping down.

That was cool!

Oh, and a pic of Drew… yawn.

*Edited April 21, 2014 @ 2:27pm

A Park Ranger said this was a River Otter as Sea Otters never leave the water…

STILL TOTALLY COOL!!!!

It’s gotta be 4:20 somewhere…

Hello!

It is just after 4pm on Sunday April 20, 2014. I have my AC/DC playlist jamming away while I have my window open so I can not only get some fresh air, but I can also hear the Rufous Hummingbirds come and go from our feeders.

While not in the great number or varity of hummingbirds we was so lucky to have while in Patagonia, we still get a kick out of these few 5-6 Rufous’s. With a Anna’s being seen every so often.

Our friends Daphna and Allen visited us this weekend and as usual, we did nothing but laugh… Ok, we ate and drank more, but you know, a good time was had by all. They even brought Maude so Drew could day “Hi!” to her. Sakura of course is above them all and stayed in the bedroom pretty much the entire weekend.

But she made her presence known…

When Daphna and Allen got Maude, we got them a dog toy. One of those “squeak” toys that we thought nothing of. We saw it, squeaked it once, threw it in the cart and later sent it off in the mail forgetting all about it.

Until we visited a few weeks later to be informed, that not only is there 1 squeak in this toy, but 18 of them. And Maude LOVED this toy above all others. To the point that when they took the toy away, Maude would cry. Both Daphna and Allen work from home. They voiced their appreciation in many tones and ways and very colorfully.

So of course we felt bad and decided on our next visit to make this up to them but getting them more squeak toys and putting them in odd places around their house, while leaving a doggie treat next to it. What made this even funnier was at this time of this, Daphna and Allen had many sleepless nights prior to this night, so when we left at 8pm they went to bed…

Only to call us at 11pm letting us know they went to bed when we left but had to get up a hour later to search their house for a full hour for any more squeak toys so they could, at long last, go to bed and SLEEP!

They used many colorful words and gave us an example of what they hear over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over… Xs 1,000.

I tell you this so you can better appreciate this…

When we met up at Daphna and Allen’s hotel room for lunch, one of the first things we saw sitting on the bed, was Sakura’s squeaky mouse. Which is battery operated and very sensitive so any minor vibration will set it off.

My first thought was Maude stole Sakura’s toy, but then I realized I told Drew to watch Maude carefully so she won’t steal anything, so it must have been Sakura coming out of the bedroom when we was site seeing the park, and putting her squeaky mouse in Daphna’s bag just so she can also torture these poor, squeaked to death people.

Cat’s. They are evil.

Our visit even started off on a bang. Daphna told us she planned to leave at 1pm so she should be here by 3pm. We knew there was a zero percent chance this would happen, but we love her for trying. Around 4pm she texted that they just got off the ferry. Around 6pm Daphna text’s me “they are on “whatever road” so will be here in moments”

I heard of this road, but for the life of me, where is it??? Um… Wait a minute… I call Daphna.

After a few questions and a round of debate, Daphna and I concluded that yes, Pauline and I really are at Fort Flagler State Park and no, that we are not, nor have we ever been, at Fort Worden State Park, which is across the bay from Fort Flagler and about a 40 minute drive.

And honestly, this explained so much about prior conversations like “why did you get a room in Squim?” (hour away) and why it took them so long to get here but after hearing about their travel and recent events, it just adds more lore to our dysfunctional, untrustworthy, immoral lives that we all share with each other as we have for the last 14+ years at least.

I made some chili, this time I really went for it, and it turned out really good with a strong kick. Now I know how to get there!

We then took Maude and walked around the park, showing them a small section of Fort Flagler as we talked long into the night and watched the stars from a battery. The weather was as good as we could have had, it could have been 10 degrees warmer, but other then that, it was great.

They left around 12am and we met up at there room in Port Ludlow, WA (20 minutes away) They stayed at the Inn of Port Ludlow which was really nice, nice room, very nice staff, and good food at the restaurant where no one under 21 is admitted which is another reason to LOVE it!

After a really good lunch, we walked around the beach some to let Maude off the leash and she quickly took to the water and even swam with a large branch in her mouth. Apparently this is the first time this dog went swimming willingly.

After this we came back to the park, we walked where we walked last night due to a missing water bottle, we found that and returned home to get our Jeep as we showed them the rest of the park. They left around 6pm and Pauline and I still trying to recover. It has been rare where we have been on the go at this rate for 2 days.

The extra bonus is, we will be just 1 ferry and 1 hour from Daphna and Allen all summer.

This will be a good summer!

 

Our Saturday hike…

Pauline and I pretty much hiked the entire park on Saturday. Of course the GPS went from full to dead 2.24 miles into it, but I think we did just over 6 miles total. We was both feeling it later that night.

We saw a garter snake on the trail, I also had it focused in when he bolted into the bush, I found it again and once again almost got a good shot when he bolted completely.

*sigh

Sunday we took both cats outside. We now have new cat harness’s for both, and I feel much more comfortable using these over the old “strap” ones.

Drew is really starting to enjoy being outside. He is still cautious, he makes sure I am still near him after every few steps, but he walks with his tail up and purrs like mad at times. He will come to Pauline or me and put his front paws on our knees with the look of “I’m going to jump up any second, be ready” and will usually walk around us a few times. When I walk with him, he goes a pretty good pace, and he walks with confidence, and he always walks towards the RV…

He has no idea what to do when he gets to the RV, he just knows that this is his box and he should be in it. He doesn’t seem to want to use the metal stairs, last time he jumped over them both, yesterday I picked him up and put him on them and he wasn’t too cool with that, so I find that interesting.

Sakura still hates the big wide world. She lays as low as she can get, and if she is being held, she will dig in with her claws to make sure she is still being held. But she is getting better. She tucks her tail for the most part, but if we sit or lay down on the grass, she uses us as a cover, and will eat the grass some, and at times, her tail will come out. She enjoys the sun and grass and flowers, she just would rather not go outside to have them.

We will continue taking them out when the weather cooperates and when there isn’t much park activity, no need to give them too much over load of humans.

I used my iPhone on these pics, and honestly, I am so not impressed. I think we will start using our Pentax’s again, I have been too disappointed with pics off the iPhone lately. Tired of the front camera being such a low quality, and even in perfect lighting, they look bad.

A Bald Eagle, a Golden Eagle and a fish

Pauline and I came upon a large Bald Eagle sitting on the side of the road and of course, the only camera we had with us was our iPhones. We started to take a few pictures when a Golden Eagle flew over the Bald Eagle and the Bald Eagle started to take off when we noticed he had a large fish, that was still flopping, in his talons.

He didn’t quite get it secured so he sat back down on top of the fish as the Golden sat in a tree about 10 yards away. We watched for a few minutes and listened to both of them cuss each other out.

We slowly drove down the road and I got as far away as I could with the truck, and for the most part the Bald Eagle was cool with us, but at the last second he took off leaving the still flopping fish behind, so we continued on our way to dump a load of brush off at the burn pit.

We returned about 10 minutes later and the Bald Eagle was once again eating his fish with the Golden watching and complaining. As we got closer the Bald grabbed the fish and flew into a tree, we was able to drive past and walk back to get a better view, but honestly, unless you have 100% perfect conditions, iPhone pics are crap.

After a few minutes of standing close to the Bald’s tree, he had enough and took off with the fish further down the road. The Golden was still in the area and still cussing up a storm.

Not the best pics, but they are the best one’s we have of this event…

Oh, there is also two cat pictures cause why not right?

 

The Happenings & Random Pictures

It has been overcast with some wind today, but felt pretty nice….even if we didn’t take advantage of it….lol Planning on doing so tomorrow, need to break in my new hiking boots. =)

Coast Guard Cutter with the mountain background from earlier last week

Coast Guard Cutter with the mountain background from earlier last week

I did get some small things done off of my to do list today, so that was something. We got a walking jacket for the cats. We wanted got it for Drew first because he is the skinniest of the two so we knew it would fit him. Then we would try it on Sakura, so we know what size to order hers (it’ll be purple). He seemed to do ok outside, nervous, but excited….keep purring and looking towards hubby to make sure that he was still there. Now her, she didn’t care for it all….but when she was a kitten she got out for about 22hrs and was never happy with the outside or people since. Use to growl at them out the window at our house.

She isn't liking it very well at all.  =("

She isn’t liking it very well at all. =(“

Drew in his walking jacket eating the grass.

Drew in his walking jacket eating the grass.

I spent Friday trying to contact a consignment store and the third party delivery service so we can empty our storage of our beloved bedroom set, dinning room set, living room table set. We really don’t want to give up our beloved king storage bed set, but why pay for it in storage if we aren’t going to use it for the next 10yrs? That is more then it is worth. =(

Beautiful Morning

Beautiful Morning

In process of phone calls, I looked down and saw that I was missing one of my accent diamonds on my wedding band part of my wedding/engagement ring set (I have them welded together). So not cool! =( I just had the prongs checked just over 2yrs ago, but this is not uncommon. Lucky I have my jewelry insured, so if there is any costs it is covered. And I have a jeweler that we totally trust. They are very reasonable and take very good care of us. We’ve gotten nearly all of my jewelry from them and they do my appraisals. The negative is that I had to ship my ring out to them since they are in Indiana. But it is worth it. They should get it Monday and hopefully, I’ll have it back by the end of next week. The other thing that drives me nuts is that I would have no ring on my finger, well, I solved that. Hubby gave me the blue topaz ring I wanted for our 10th, so I put that where my wedding/engagement ring goes. That is a HUGE help…..other wise I would lose it, not having something there.

Picked up a TV for the bedroom last week, now need to get another apple tv and figure out how we are going to set it up. Our rv is a 2002, so it was made with square box tvs in mind. But no matter what, it is one step closer where we can use our bed for cuddling late at night in front of the tv. We don’t like to spend that much time in bed, it actually hurts our bodies, but we miss the cuddling on our movie nights. So I’m looking forward to us getting it set up, once we figure it out. Friday night over the last few years have become our movie night after we watch Real Time with Bill Mahr.

Out birding a few weeks ago

Out birding a few weeks ago