It's early in the morning and it's raining. Devon the dog is still dead tired from four days of constant activity, so I don't really have to walk him for too long this morning. Besides, Bill is taking today off so he will probably check in with the dog during the day. Hmmm... perfect time to update this blog! What's been happening these past few days? Let's see...
On Saturday (Christmas Eve), we went geocaching up at Almaden Quicksilver Park. There was a cache that was just hidden a few days earlier and we wanted to be FTF (first to find), so off we went. The park is dog-friendly, so Devon came with us. Ooops! Rewind....
...before leaving for the park, Bill asked me to unwrap the Christmas present he got me, even though it was early yet. So I did. Yippee! He got me a GPS receiver! Happy happy joy joy! You know me and gadgets. I love 'em. Plus, now I'll have my own toy to use when geocaching. Ok, back to the park...
We first looked for a cache that was near the entrance and found it in fairly short order. Then it was on to the cache that we wanted to FTF. The hike was a bit tiring. The terrain was steep and it was muddy due to the recent rains. Found the general vicinity, but try as we might we could not find the cache. We must've looked for an hour! Even took a break to eat. Bummed out, we decided to give up.
On our way back down to the car we saw a mountain lion! What's a mountain lion, you ask? Well, it's a cougar. As we were coming down a hill on the trail, in an area without tree cover, we saw the big cat a relatively short distance away. It was stalking prey. It looked at us briefly but resumed its hunt. Thank goodness Devon the dog was with us, because supposedly cougars avoiod dogs. That cat was BIG! So we went off the trail into back country (using GPS to guide us - high tech!) to avoid meeting the mountain lion. Along the way we saw a group of wild turkeys under the trees. They look nothing like farmed turkeys, lemme tell ya. They are a lot more streamlined and they don't look ridiculously out of proportion.
We also saw quite a bit of other fauna during this hike. Birds of prey in flight (one was really big, probably an eagle), song birds, squirrels, etc. No rattlers, thank goodness.
Got back to the car safe and sound. Dried up a bit and went home. At Bill's we bathed the dog and found some ticks! There was one on me, too! SCARY! Good thing none of them actually attached. I guess that Frontline Plus really works! Whew!
Eventually I went back to my place to prepare for Christmas Eve dinner. Managed to plug up the kitchen sink when I stuffed way too much potato peel down the garbage disposal. Had to call an emergency plumber. So I christened the mashed potatoes we had at dinner "The $170 mashed potatoes", because that's how much I had to pay the plumber. Damn! I wonder if they all drive luxury cars, with all that money they make?
That's about it for now. More updates later.