This past weekend involved many fun adventures. One of those adventures was taking Poe and Midna along on our trip to visit my family. Our friends that we would have asked to watch them were also going to be out of town and I really didn’t want to leave them alone for several days. The trip there was relatively calm. Poe took it very well and slept on our laps most of the way. Midna was a little more unsettled but eventually did calm down. About halfway through the three hour car drive we stopped and let them run around in the grass for a bit. At least, that was the intention. They were both rather frightened of outside. They’ve been kept inside since we’ve had them so it’s no real surprise. We completed the trip with no further misshaps. The next day we decided we would try the outside thing again.
First the cats encountered the dogs— through the glass door. My mom has two dogs that run loose most of the time. The cats had already had a tiny run in with them when we carried them inside the night before. What this picture doesn’t show is how much Midna arched her back and bushed her tail out after seeing the dog. Since they were running around the back of the house we decided to take the cats out to the front. What we didn’t count on was my mom’s dogs running to the front of the house as quick as they did.
As you can see, Poe was not amused. We hadn’t brought Midna out yet so he was the only one that got to experience the dogs up close. (That is, until one of them got inside the house the next day. That made both of the cats run downstairs and stay there for a good while.) See, not only is Poe not amused about the dogs he really didn’t like the whole outside experience. At. All. He wasn’t quite as bad as Minda who wanted to bury herself in our laps or run under the steps but he didn’t seem to enjoy it at all.
On Monday my mom suggested that we go hiking at a nearby park. I’ve been to this park several times but never on the trail she wanted to go on. So off we went to climb this ridge. And a climb it was. They’ve made it fairly accessible but there were some pretty steep parts. I took several photos that I’ll be posting on 365 this week so look out for those.
This is what we were treated with at the end (rather, the midpoint) of our hike. Sadly it was a rather hazy day so the mountains didn’t show up all that well. I think if I were ever to move farther away from this area the mountains are one of the things I’d miss the most.
After a short break we headed back down. The trip down was considerably shorter than the trip up. Maybe because my mom and I stopped less to take pictures but maybe because of two incidents we had. The first happened when we stopped for a minute to rest. My mom thought she felt something crawling on her neck but then realized that there was a HUGE hornet on her leg. Maybe it wasn’t a hornet but it was large and definitely looked like it could sting. That certainly shortened our break and off we went again. It wasn’t long, though, before she started yelling and pushing me off the side of the trail. At first I couldn’t figure out what was going on until I saw this:
Believe me, when I saw that I started screaming as well. My mom thought it was a copperhead but when we showed the pictures to some family they said it was a rattlesnake. Whichever the case it’s still a snake and likely poisonous. Michael had walked right by it on the other side of the path but it was between us and our way forward. My mom and I walked very slowly off to the side and managed to get around it. Her pictures were probably better since she had her telephoto lens; you can bet I wasn’t going to try to get closer for a better picture! Once we were past it we definitely walked a bit faster and kept a sharper eye out for any more snakes.
