What a wonderful oasis this camp is. Right off highway 17, which is not heavily traveled at night. (Heavy traffic here means a vehicle every five minutes.) because of my hard work in setting up the tent in the wind, cold and dark last night, i decided to stay an extra day and reap the rewards of my labor. The temperature has barely moved since this morning at 7:30 (42) and the wind chill is lower. The temperature is supposed to drop tonight, which means it will be close to or below freezing. Snow is forecast for early next week. Most guys my age are heading south and here i am traveling north. Make that, "most guys any age." i am the only tenter in the camp, for quite understanable reasons. Only six other sites of the 200 or so are occupied, all others by RVs. I am sitting comfortably in my tent writing this, as leben and erde enjoy the cold fresh air outside, leben unleased, erde tethered by a 12 foot leashed, doubley secured, in fact, in case she finds a loophole to escape.
I keep getting the day of the week wrong in some of my journal entries. I usually find out what day it is when i get Leben's daily pill ratio from its weekly container, S M T W T F S. That, giving leben his pills, is by far the toughest part of this trip. He has refused every kind of "pill pocket" i have tried to pull over on him and still hasn't been willing to accept the tradeoff, or consequences, namely, my shoving 5 pills down his throat each morning. But like the trooper he is, when he sees that pill container being opened, he obediently comes when summoned to take his pills. At home, in the warmth of my kitchen, it's not that bAd. But try it sometime with a dog with an extra-long snout and in the cold when your fingers could barely reach into your pocket to retrieve money to pay for a cup of steaming Starbuck's coffee. What makes it especially tough is navigating my numb, cold fingers between the Scylla of his right fang and the Charybdis of his left one, knowing that one slip of my tight hold on his lips under his teeth would mean partial dismembersip for me. In the cold, i check my poor fingers after i withdraw them for either their presence or to see if i need stitches. The good news for leben is that he knows there's a treat at the end of this agony for him (him, not me...this chore gives substance to the expression, it hurts me more than it hurts you), although it really is not a treat but a liver flavored C&G tablet, which he enjoys nonethless. Erde gets one too, and so when she sees me pull out Leben's pill box, she happily jumos up and waits for her treat, ignoring completely her brother's ordeal that leads to the fake treat.
Tomorrow we head north 200 miles to another camp on lake superior,, Pukaskwas National Park. It closed after Labor Day but you can still camp there. The comfort station (showers, human toilets, etc.) are all shut down but i understand they have composting toilets for campers (probably only me) to use, whatever the hell that means. (I though composting things were for discarded vegtables, fruits and coffe grounds.)
The dogs have been sitting outside for the last hour contemplating nature or whatever dogs do when outside like that in the cold and drizzle. Erde prefers the outdoors (Leben usually prefers to be where i am, waiting for his next command, e,g., want a treat?). One time in 2003 i wanted to see how long she would lie outside on a deck when it was snowing, but i had to call her inside when she was completely covered with snow.
Time to put in a few miles with Lewis and Clark. I might be able to learn something from them.
(sidenote: i just went outside to search for my just recently opened box of Ritz crackers to treat myself and discovered that the box was empty. Apparently, i left open the lid on the cooler where they were and one or both of the dogs must have broken Into out during a gas stop. That is leben's specialty, although erde sometimes shares in the undeserved treats. Last year, a few days before our trip, i came home and discovered one or both of them had broken into my food supply and consumed all the chocolare bars. Poison control told me that if it was erde (80 pounds) it could kill her so, much to their displeasure, i had to squirt syringe upon syringe of hydrogen peroxide down their throats to induce vomiting. 30 minutes later, the results were in...leben alone was the culprit. This is why a bottle of HPO and a syringe are the sine qua non of the dogs' first aid kit. So are a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of white bread, but for other kinds of stuff they might ingest.
This morning the dogs were treated to a gourmet breakfast on the verenda. See below photo. They got the same fare, but with tablecloth and napkins under their chins. They could not care less about the view.
My fingers are freezing. Since it is hard enough typing intelligbly on the iPad with bare fingers, it is impossible to do it with gloves on since heat is not detected. I bet at some point, the iPad will not detect any warmth in my fingers. Maybe it will automatically send some message like, GO WARM YOUR HANDS NOW. i am constantly discovering all these hidden apps in this thing.
I need to warm up my hands.
Ed
No comments:
Post a Comment