Wrong road to Albuquerque lake?

Will you look at that. As I'm gassing up the Viper, Kiwi is having one of her "Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny" moments. Tail thumping and sternly talking to me, "lets get this moving, the clock is ticking, I ain't got all day". So I fill it up, check the air, wash the windshield, not, and away we go.But not to the beach. What? You said yesterday it was destination beach for the Kiwi. Yes I did. But while lying down after prepping for the trip, I realized it would be 7 to 8 hours driving. That is too much car time for Kiwi just to enjoy a 5 mile beach walk. So I asked where else and she replied, "lick, lick, bark, lick, lick and that is where we headed. To Silver Lake for those that don't understand Kiwi ;-)

So I'm driving, excuse me, chauffeuring Kiwi to the trailhead and the road is narrow and windy. While going up hill, that makes it fun. Plus I was singing to Paul Young's "Love is in the air" disco version. I think Kiwi had her head out the window during that part. Coincidence? :-) Where were we, oh yes, Silver Lake. If you consult Kiwi's travel logue you'll find at that it's an eleven mile hike with a 2,300 foot elevation gain and a peak at 5,700 ft. So its back into the Buckhorn Wilderness for Kiwi and the pack animal. You can see her grin as she looks at me with the backpack. (dumb burro) LOL
We climbed steeply into high country the first mile, passing rhododendrons along the way. There are plenty of switchbacks on this trail, I quit counting after 20. After a long climbing traverse through the forest, we arrived at a steep alpine meadow that provided nice views of open avalanche chutes.Just another good shot of the prettiest redhead I know. ;-)
Not the greatest pic below, but there are some "alpine wildflowers". Saw some pretty red ones, blue, purple, white, yellow and even orange. But what you don't see in the "Sound of Music" beauty, is the darn bumble bees. Late in the year, plenty of warmth, flowers in bloom and yes, bees going around to pollinate. I dressed in subtle colors that were not any like the "wildflowers" we saw. Didn't want any bee to try and pollinate me. bbiab Kiwi needs time. Ok back, she had to go piddle. However, the bees were incessant with their droning. Maybe they weren't trying to pollinate me but they could have considered me the man from the census bureau and wanted me to buzz off. :-)
Some flavor of Northwest woodpecker. It was about 10 feet away.
The trail switched back around a waterfall and steadily climbed toward the alpine flats of Camp Windy. Looking south, brings us Mount Baker in the distance and a higher, better view of the chutes. We gave the right of way to a group of people and their "pack animals". Some mellow llamas were coming back from their camping expedition. I couldn't tell from Kiwi's smirk, whether she wanted to herd the slow-gaited pack laborers or if she classified me as one of the slow-gaited pack laborers. ROFL. But she minded her manners and charged after no one. Not even a bark or muffled whuff.A sneak at the peak for a future trip. That is Mount Townsend behind Kiwi at 6,280 ft.And so we find ourselves at OUR highpoint and take a couple photos and video for prosperity.
Little did I know that Silver Lake was another two miles further, with about 1.5 of that going downhill. Man, up, down, up, down and this wasn't my best day. (explained later)

Some more wildflowers surrounding a wild-child. I believe she is looking at me thinking, "I'm much prettier than these flowers, right dad? Riigghhtttt? :-)And a small waterfall about half a mile from Silver Lake. (camera hog, or should that be dog? hehe)Voila, Silver Lake. Which actually contains Eastern Brook trout. Nice, clear and nestled away for some lucky adventurers to encounter. Several camping parties passed us as we hiked nearer.
Here's the princess posing in peaciful bliss. (that would make a good wallpaper, no?)
Overlooking her palacial pool. She SO wanted to jump in after last weeks fun at Lena Lake. But it was a small body of still water that I didn't consider the freshest, trout or no trout. Plus there were plenty of insects all over, so no wet-n-wild fun this time for Kiwita.
So stay tuned, or nowadays bookmarked, for another upcoming adventure of Kiwi the Australian Cattle Dog.

Oh yeah, the explanation. Well last night during prep for the trail. I washed my hiking boots. Licky Kiwi has her's done in no time. :-) Well anywho, I'm loading up the car this morning, toss the boots, backpack, etc in the Rolls and head up. After mucho driving, we arrive at the trailhead. As I go to put my boots on, I did a double-take. Whatha.... Oh man. I had forgotten to put the laces BACK IN the boots. Needless to say, no records were set today, but no blisters either. But coming back down did produce some sore little piddies that went wee, wee wee all the way down the mountain. ROFL

Saturday fun

What a great way to start the day. I took Kiwi out for a late night piddle, ~1030pm, and she let me sleep in till 7:00!!! Wahoo! Felt so good to snooze some extra Z's. And so the day starts for us.

And away we go. Down the hill, with cars passing occasionally. Kiwi in a right smart heel. We start to bottom out and we hear this strange noise coming from the undeveloped area on the right. We both turned our heads at the strange sound, ears on alert but no bark from Kiwi, so I knew it wasn't dangerous. Oh well, we kept going. Another nice nay in the Pacific Northwest. We were able to catch the falling moon as it drifted off into daylight. I tried a little howl to spark the primal animal in Kiwi, but she just cocked her head in consternation and then gave me a coy look that said, "get real dad" or something like that. Kinda made me put my tail between my legs. LOLWell I'm feeling good because of the extra sleep time, so as we saunter past Starbucks, I give them a visit. Got me a Venti blackberry green tea frappachino. Cold and mucho calories, cause it was my breakfast. Never have acquired the taste of coffee. (shakes head in yuckiness)
We continue to amble on and find our way near a Wally World. I needed to pickup some envelopes so I could send in the order for my ACD-L 2006 sweatshirt. Wahoo!! It was still relatively early, so I took Kiwi in with me, via the garden entrance, picked up a box of envelopes and went to the self-checkout. Kiwi didn't skip a beat. Beautiful heel the entire time, no pulling, and even sat when I was busy paying right in front of the line manager. ;-) So no issues and we showed how a well socialized an ACD can act. You go Kiwi girl.Notice the trailer below? If you haven't seen it yet, there is a video of Kiwi recycling some material. I'm not a card-carrying tree hugger, but there isn't another planet that is ready to move on to if we screw this one up. So we do our part.Couldn't pass up this picture as we were exiting the parking lot. Some folks camped there overnight. But click on the picture and look close at the "curtains". Got a chuckle out me. LOL
And then its just back the way we came, negotiating the traffic and being safe. Again, no issue with Kiwi next to the big road.Well, we come back to the hill with the strange noise.
And sure enough, we heard it again. I stopped, looked around, listened mighty hard and gave it some ponderous thought. What could be making that noise. It wasn't an animal, no. Not a person. There it went again. Looking, thinking, looking, thinking, OW! need a Tylenol. ROFL But I finally figured it out. The cars way up the hill were running over a manhole cover and that sound was reflected in a different manner off the area of bushes below. That one had me stumped for a while. Kiwi must have been using her ACD mind power to assist on that one. :-)
After returning home, we prepared to go out again but with the four-wheeled conveyance this time. As I needed to buy some lumber for a project that I'm helping with.

We head over to Buddy's and Major's place, where the project is in progress. Here's a cute video of Buddy. My good friend Steph is trying to teach me woodworking skills. Thank goodness he has the patience and skills to do so. We are working on a custom horizontal file cabinet that will go in my office retreat.
So Steph does the brain work and crucial set-ups and then lets me have all the fun. It is fun. Creating something useful and unique in an intricate manner is really rewarding. We're still in the framing/skeleton stage. Today we did a bunch of joint pieces for the drawers. I believe the style is called "lap" joints. They fit real well and provide a lot more strength than just nailing a two by four. Below is one of the corners undergoing a test fit. Great work huh?Here is a shot of all the pieces that were made today. Definitely feel the work earlier today in the forearms right now. LOLAfter the woodworking, Kiwi and I head out for another walk. We return home to finish our chores and prepare for our outing tomorrow. Kiwi is going to the beach for her first time. Wahoo! I hope she doesn't try to drink much of the salt water. I'll have plenty of fresh water along. And extra towels. So Kiwi bids you adios while she tackles a chewy as I finish typing like a turtle.

and still going....

Thank you all for the kind words concerning Kiwi. We actually went to the vet today but for another issue. Seems when Kiwi was playing with me the other night, yes she is rather tolerant, she caught her left dew-claw on something. After coming home today and letting her out of the kennel, I accidently bumped it and she yelped. I know the tough ACD image and Kiwi is no softie. So into the car and off to the vet we went. They were able to squeeze us in without a hiccup. Turned out she did tear the dew-claw some, kinda like us having a fingernail lifted. The vet trimmed both down and that was all. With both the vet and the tech, Kiwi behaved decently. I held her for the "repair work" and she only yelped on the injured one. No bites, or growling, nada. Whew. After swapping hiking stories with the vet, she takes SIX out at a time!, she gave us some pain medicine and away we went.
We get ourselves home and fed, look around and emerged at that telepathic node that says....dogpark! So its back into the BMW and zoom, zoom. Here is how Kiwi, in a close-up shot at that, is harnessed when not riding in a crate. She is wearing a "Roadie" that is attached to a sheathed steel cable that is connected with carabiners to the back dashboard, flat thing. She has room to enjoy both windows, which she loves to do. Occasionally nippin or biting at the wind as we drive along. On that note, she is a GREAT backseat driver. She hardly ever barks, and when she does its mostly at me. Probably my disco music. Other vehicles, loud harleys, joggers, all will get her attention but she doesn't bark. Yippee! Her eyes remind me of the Egyptian style make-up.
So we arrive at the dog-park and there are about seven or so there. Everyone is mellow and well behaved tonight. Kiwi met Mango, no fruit jokes please, for the first time. Mango is a real big great dane but is very docile. But she takes an interest in sticks and balls. Well Kiwi is , at the moment, a stick dog. She loves to pick them up and carry them till bored when we are on her walks. When idle, she will chew on them, which is one reason dogs like sticks. Anywho, Kiwi had her stick and Mango wanted it. They spent about five minutes taking it from each other. No one got aggressive, but Kiwi did bark once after Mango took the stick and walked away. I have some video of it but the files sizes are up there. Here is a pic of the two "sharing" the stick.

I just can't resist sharing this pic of the two next to each other to show some scale of Mango. Kiwi aint big, about 38 lbs today and roughly 18 inches at the withers. Man, Mango is big. Her head is above my belly button and I'm six foot.

What a day!

The day started out like most. Up at 4:45 to walk Kiwi 4 miles before heading off to the salt mines to earn a few shekels. Arrive back at the palatial estate, change clothes and remove Kiwi from her kennel. Throw on the leash and head for our "stretch the legs before we eat walk".
Man there was a lot of traffic just to cross the street in front of our house. Hmmm. We start on our way and very soon run up to an accident scene. The police had rerouted traffic, hence the more than normal cars on our yellow brick road, and were waiting for the tow-trucks to arrive. A small car had collided with a local beer delivery van. The front of the car was pretty tore up, but the van was on its side! I could see the cans piled up against the back window. Even though it was the first time I snapped pics of a "scene", I somehow felt guilty. Because I was not involved or anything. But it was in a public area and the cop didn't even give me a second glance. I'll post the pic tommorrow.After dinner we prepared to go to Kiwi's first day of advanced class at our local Petsmart. Where we get to enjoy our favorite instructor Kelly. She has me trained to talk to her everytime I go there. If I'm real good, she'll give me a treat. LOL So we park and start another walk before class to exercise some more and I run into an old aquaintance, Phil. We chatted for awhile and then continued our walk. Several minutes later, we run into another friend, Tom. And we start to chat in the parking lot. So Kiwi is at my side, anxious to be moving, when I see something out of the corner of my eye. That thing turned out to be a van! I quickly stepped forward while pulling on Kiwi's leash to get out of the way. Well as I looked down I saw her tail get run over! Of course she yelped. The people in the van, elderly couple, stopped immediately and started apologizing. I saw that Kiwi was alright, feeling her tail and her not in any pain. Whew, that was close. Several people came to check on Kiwi and their interest made me feel better ( I thought I was partly to blame, but they all said no). As we were walking away heading to class, looking in ALL directions, I thought what if Kiwi had her hind quarters caught by the tire. Man I started tearing right up and had to push those thoughts away immediately. Can't go there.
Anywho, that happened right before advance class. So Kelly made the introductions and laid out our agenda for the course. We got right into the lesson and I saw Kiwi was still a little strung out, so she wasn't at her best. She is definitely excused though. Here are some pics of Kiwi's classmates. I hope I get all the names correct. :-)

The Golden girl here is Ginger.This mellow marvel is Mia. She is really cool.
And I can't recall the name of this sweetheart. Rum & coke is kicking in. :-)Here we have Phoebe, which I believe has some ACD in her.And this well behaved BC is named Blue.

Lovin it at Lena Lake

While I was contemplating which day hike to go on this weekend, Kiwi came up, nudged my knee and looked me square in the eye. She had her head kinda leaning to the left and that was all that was needed to complete the telepathic moment. She wanted to go to Lena Lake. She knew this time of year, when it is warm and dry, that a shady, cool, easy hike with a good stream to wash off the trail dust was just the ticket for us. And I'm glad that hike was chosen as I was feeling the single life again. (that's meant to read tired, lol)
The family is off vacationing in Mexico, while Dad has to do the dirty work.













But no problem, because I get to take care of the prettiest redhead this side of Seattle, Kiwi the Australian Cattle Dog. :-)

So we load up the backpacks, throw them in the Ferrari and head out. As we drive around and over to Hwy 101, we make our customary stop at the Hoodsport forestry station to chat with Penny. There has been a recent fire in the Lake Cushman area but there are no issues for those heading to Lena Lake. Probably more hikers than normal, due to some of the other trails being closed on account of the smoldering fire. So back in the Viper and away we go. As we pass the Hoodsport winery, Kiwi nudges my elbow to get my attention. I tell her no way young lady.

Sure enough, there are plenty of hikers at the trail head to Lena Lake. We get ready and Kiwi dons her Ruffwear packback and looks right outdoorsy and hikerly like, even I say so myself. With bladders empty, we hit the trail.

Kiwi made the right choice. Even though it was near ninety degrees, it was eay going in the shade of all the tall trees along the trail. Several hikers were friendly with conversation and their occasional pooches were just as freindly. Kiwi had no challenges nor any sort of issue with other four-legged hikers today.

You might ask why there are not many shots of Kiwi's dad in her blog. Well, as smart as Australian Cattles Dogs are, Kiwi hasn't, yet, learn to hold the camera steady and press the button. It might be a good idea for some clicker training. So here is a picture of Kiwi's dad from way back. (he's the good lookin one) So we continue to enjoy our easy hike in the tranquil setting of the Olympic Peninsula. With great views of the lake from a high vantage point, plenty of running water and just another gorgeous northwest day, Kiwi and I had a blast.
This bridge is a great turn-around point for many day hikers. I think its about 6-7 miles round trip. With the easy grade, lakeside campsights and super views, the trail does have many users.
Oh here is another pic of Kiwi's dad some time ago when he was working on submarines for the Navy. Something about radiation is bad for DNA. Or something like that. I know its not that flattering or youthful looking, but at least I don't get carded or frisked when I'm out clubbing.... much.
SoI take the backpack off Kiwi so she can play in the stream. And she enjoys it!!! Today she actually swam some instead of getting her knees wet. So I started to gingerly make my way out into the middle of the stream, looking for dry boulders to balance on. Meanwhile, Kiwi is frolicking all over the place, causing me to gyrate like a belly dancer to keep the leash untangled. Kiwi notices this and comes to join me on the boulder. No, NO Kiwi off, get off, not enough room. She looks at me, smiles and then shakes herself off, causing me to loose what balance I had and fall on my bum. Whew, that was close. I didn't get wet, but some of the hikers snapping photos on the bridge gave me the thumbs-up sign. Or was the L-shaped sign on the forehead? I couldn't quite make it out. LOL Later on I did fall because Kiwi lured me back out in the middle again. This time she bolted back to shore with me thinking "Leash!!! quick release, quick release", but noooo, there is no quick release on my end of the leash. Thankfully I brought extra socks and my hiking pants were convertible. No kibble for Kiwi. Oh yeah, the sky was beautiful and blue.Here is the "refreshing" water that Kiwi shared with me. It was pretty easy to reach the shore after one decides that staying dry is only an option, leash or no leash. And being prepared by bringing extra clothing certainly helps. There were no issues about public nudity from any of the other hikers because, even though I was out in "public" there wasn't enough "nudity" after that cold water hit home. The twins are traveling north as I type. ROFLSo after our wet and wild fun, we took a nap in the sun overlooking the lake. Who's luvin Lean Lake now? We are! :-)