Devil's Gulch

Our plans to go for a hike on Sunday were dampened by the rain that drizzled off and on throughout the day, but they didn’t get washed out completely. Instead of leaving for a hike right after breakfast, we did some stuff around the house, then went grocery shopping, and then it was time for lunch and after lunch a nap…

When Cailan woke up, the rain had temporarily abated, so we headed out to Devil’s Canyon, part of the Black Ridge Wilderness Area about 15 minutes west of town. Not surprisingly, there weren’t many people at the trailhead. We started up the wide graveled path with Cailan on my back just as it started sprinkling again, and soon it was raining steadily on us but we persevered. We turned off the wide path onto a narrow dirt trail that was right at the rim of Devil’s Canyon, though the canyon here was maybe only 20 feet deep and 30 feet across, with a dry creek bed at the bottom. After a while, the trail slanted down into the canyon.

We stopped for a snack and to put on our raincoats, while the occasional grumble of thunder echoed around the mesa. Cailan was surprisingly happy, even though he was chilly and damp, and was especially excited about chomping his strawberry cereal bar. We kept on hiking, following the dry creek bed which was now accumulating the occasional puddle; Utah did his best to drink from every puddle. The canyon walls were growing higher, sloping near the creek bed then rising steeply with reddish-orange rock faces. At a fork in the trail, we took the right turn up a steep hill and followed the trail along a bench, well above the creek bed but below the rocky canyon walls.



Cailan was on the lookout for the desert bighorn sheep that live in this canyon, but we never saw them. We did see a couple toads, and two lizards, and a big bird (turkey vulture?) perched on a rock high above us. We saw some rocky towers jutting out from the canyon walls. I called the first one I saw a finger rock, and Cailan immediately wanted to know where the thumb rock was. Soon we found another tower to call the thumb rock, and when we got near the base of that, we decided it was a good spot to turn around.




On the way back to the car, we were walking in the creek bed again and I slipped in some mud and came crashing to my hands and knees. I still had Cailan on my back, and I worked very hard to not fall all the way over on to him. He was unharmed, but we both got muddy and had to have a leg bath when we got home.

Now and then

Cailan and Chris were laying on the couch last night, and seeing the two of them like that made me think of this picture from when Cailan was a newborn:

Here is the same picture of them now:

It kind of made me nostalgic for those tiny newborn days, but then again, three weeks old was never as much fun as this:

Lost and found

We had a big scare today! This morning, I was at work, Chris and Cailan were playing with Legos in Cailan’s room, and Utah was lounging in the back yard. At least, that’s what Chris thought he was doing. At about 10:15, Chris and Cailan were going to go run some errands, so Chris went to let Utah inside – but he wasn’t in the yard! Chris and Cailan drove around the neighborhood looking for him for about half an hour, without any luck. Chris called the animal shelter and added Utah’s description to their “lost dog log”, then called me, almost in tears. I headed home for lunch at about 11:00 and stayed in the house with Cailan while Chris cruised the neighborhood on his bike.

I kept hearing a lot of barking from the dogs at the house behind us, and I kept hoping they were barking at Utah, but there was no sign of him hanging around there fence. At about 11:30, they started up with a flurry of barking, so I went in the back yard and whistled. Immediately I heard Utah’s distinctive bark. I called to him: “Utah! Utah!” and heard him bark some more. I went in the back yard and couldn’t see him anywhere, but I could definitely hear him. Then I heard a human voice say “Is this your dog?” It was the woman who lives two houses down from the neighbors behind us. I hollered to her that my dog was missing and that sounded like him. She said she would bring him over to our house.

I called Chris on the cell phone and told him Utah had been found. He was nearby on his bike, so he said he would go to meet the neighbor. Then the animal shelter called, saying that they had received a “found dog” message that matched the description of our lost dog. I let them know that we had just connected with the neighbor and it looked like our dog would be home soon. A few minutes later, Chris and Utah came through the door. Chris was looking stressed, tired, and relieved, but Utah looked happy-go-lucky and, by the way, is it time for lunch?
The neighbor had found Utah shortly after 9:00. He wasn’t wearing his collar - we often take it off when he’s inside because the jingling of the tags can be annoying – so they didn’t know who he belonged to. They took him to the vet and learned that he was microchipped, but the microchip registry didn’t have current information on us. So they picked up some dog food, brought him back to their house, and called the animal shelter. The whole time Chris was combing the neighborhood looking for Utah, he was there just a few houses away but tucked in the back yard so Chris never saw him.

Our next house project, obviously, is to get more secure latches for the gates on our fence. Utah will have to lounge around on his new puffy dog bed, safely inside, until then.

Cailanism

Today is a "Cailan-Daddy" day. I'm at work, and Chris and Cailan get to spend the day playing together. Chris just called me at my desk, to tell me what Cailan said immediately upon waking up from his nap:

"And that's how I wrote the song about the beads."

Daddy is a gallimimus

Cailan's imagination has really taken off in the last few days. He has started pretending to be animals: "Cailan is a zebra. I'm a zebra with a shirt on." Yesterday he was playing dinosaurs and assigned roles to everyone in the family:

Cailan is a corythosaurus. Daddy is a gallimimus. Mommy is a hypsilophodon. The corythosaurus is stuck. He needs the gallimimus to help him.