Saturday March 30, 2024
Dear Diary,
I woke up at 8:30 AM. I had slept through the entire night. It felt great to get 11 hours of sleep and over all, I felt young and strong again. I was ready for a day of hiking. I got up, made tea and two 64 oz. smoothies. Rosie got up and we slowly started taking down our camp. We planned to go on a hike as soon as we finished packing but we weren’t in a hurry and took our time. One of our new friends Rob came by and visited with us for a while. Rey had gone fishing early that morning hoping to get ahead of the Easter crowd that was streaming into the park. We had a good visit and promised to stop by and tell them goodbye before we left.
At was almost 10 AM when we finished packing. We had to be out of our campsite at noon and I didn’t think 2 hours was enough time to get all the hiking in that we wanted to do. We decided to move our vehicles to overflow parking so we could hike as long as went wanted and wouldn’t have to pay attention to the time. We moved our vehicles and headed for the trail. The first trail we hiked was called “white cave trail”, we had gone a ways up the trail when we heard sirens down at the campgrounds. The sirens went on for a really long time and we weren’t sure if someone was hurt or if it was something else. It seemed to go on for way too long to be an emergency and the sirens intermittently turned off and on. We made it to “white cave” around the time the sirens stopped. We sat on a rock and rested for a while. Some other hikers came by and I asked if they knew what the sirens were about. They said it was a truck with a giant Easter bunny in back throwing candy to the kids. Well I was glad we had missed all that.
While we sat there a few hikers came by and one had their dog off leash. Little Bit does not like his leash and is constantly pulling against it. So when we started hiking again I let him off leash to see how he would do. My main concern was if a bigger dog was off leash and came at him I wouldn’t be able to scoop him up out of harms way. Otherwise I knew he would do fine off leash since he is very well trained.
The hike was great fun. It was really challenging at times, there were steep inclines where we climbed up rocks. Going down steep inclines was the most challenging because it was easy to slide on the loose rocks. We did not come across very many other hikers which surprised me since the campground was packed full. Little Bit did great off leash and stayed with us. When we came across other hikers he would wag his stump tail and let them pet him. At one point we were on a really challenging trail going up and came across a couple with their young son who had to be around 4 years old. His legs were all scraped up from falling and I think his parents hadn’t realized they had gotten on such a challenging trail. The child saw Little Bit and Bits walked toward him wagging his tail, expecting to get petted. The boy started yelling and took off running away from Bits. I was calling for Bits to come but he was confused by the boy and thought he wanted to play. The boy ran past me and I tried grabbing his arm to keep him from falling. I missed and the boy slide on the rocks and fell down. His dad picked him up and his mom walked past us and said that maybe I should keep my dog on a leash. I wasn’t sure Bits being on leash would have kept the boy from freaking out but I knew that his parents were probably having a hard time on that challenging trail with a young child. I knew that if I had picked Bits up before we got to the people, that would have prevented the boy from getting scared. I decided that if we came up on anymore people, I would pick Bits up and hold him until we got past them. That worked out well and there were no more issues the rest of the hike.
We hiked for 3 hours total and had a wonderful time, I loved every minute of it. It was good we moved our vehicles out of the campsite or we would have been late for our check-out time. During our hike, I took pictures of flowers and plants and bugs to put on iNaturalist and some of the views were spectacular. After we got down off the trails we headed to where our vehicles were parked. We stopped at the gift shop on our way and Rosie bought me another t-shirt. The one I had bought yesterday was too small but Rosie liked it and said she would take it because she was going to buy one for herself anyway. Then she bought me another one a size bigger that fit me. That was a great trade off. After the gift shop we walked by Rob and Rey’s motor home and said goodbye to them and we all said we would keep in touch.
When we arrived back at our vehicles Rosie and I decided we were great adventure buddies and would plan another trip soon. Probably in May after I get back from helping my sister Trisha after she gets her ankle replacement surgery. I’ll be leaving April 24 for 2 weeks. Rosie has a lot going on too so it might not be until June but we will definitely go on more adventures together. On the drive home, I talked to my sister and followed behind Rosie until I reached San Antonio. Then I turned off to stop at an H‑E‑B plus and buy fresh squeezed OJ and some more produce.
Satisfied I had plenty of food for a few days, I finished the drive home and arrived at around 7 PM. It was good to see Angel and Christopher and the animas again. Christopher helped me unload the truck and put away the groceries. I started my dirty clothes washing and Angel and I walked down to the gulley and she showed me steps Christopher and her had made all around the gulley where she Iikes to play. When we got back from the gulley, I took a nice long shower and we all gathered in the banana hut for story time. I showed them pictures of my trip and read one chapter from Stormy, Misty’s Foal. We said our good nights and Christooger went in the house. Angel slept on the trundle bed next to me and we fell asleep at around 9:30 PM.
Thank you for reading my blog, and being a part of my life. I dearly appreciate you.
Love,
Victoria
P. S. This blog post was inspired by the Holy Spirit.