I don't know quite how to talk about 2 weeks of vacation...so I'll do it backwards. :)
By the last day of our trip, I was ready to come home and sleep in my own bed. I was ready to have clean laundry. I missed my little girl.
We saw a lot of funny road crossing signs that I should have taken pictures of....but didn't think about it being funny until the last day. On the last lonely road home, I made Cory pull over so I could take pictures of a couple of them. I was sleeping when we passed the big horned sheep crossing signs...and you have all seen the tractor crossings and "normal" cow crossings. I kept looking for a cow crossing the road on a skateboard. I thought that would have made for a great blog posting. There were at least 5 signs, so I thought for sure it must be a problem with the cows here showing off...didn't see any.
I also looked for these apparently "wild" cows. Cory says this was all wild horse and cow land. I wanted to see if a "wild" cow looked somehow different from a "normal" cow since the signs were so different. From the sign, you might think you'd want to watch out for a wild cow charging at your car....especially if it's a red car. Of all the animal encounters we had on this trip, that would have been pretty funny....we didn't see ANY wild cows.
Wild horses we saw a bunch of. I couldn't believe how many...probably hundreds. Cory told me they do a wild horse auction every year, and that's where he bought a few of his horses. He said they go for pretty cheap, but you have to know how to train them and have a large enough area to keep them. When we build our cabin and have enough area for a few horses to roam, you can bet we'll be at the horse auction. :) Cory said they also auction some wild burros. Emma has wanted a donkey for a pet since she fed a little fat grey donkey a carrot at a petting zoo a couple years ago. We stopped by the Great Basin National Park. It's only about a 3 hour drive from home and has no entrance fee. We didn't have a lot of time, but did take a tour of the Leman Cave. It's pretty amazing to me that there could be a cave like this under the desert. The park ranger said there are two stories about how the cave was discovered and you can pick which one you want to believe. One was that a poor man was eating his lunch in the desert and a mouse came and dragged some of his sandwich into a hole....he followed the mouse to get his sandwich back and found the cave. The other is that the same man was riding his horse across the desert and the horse accidentally fell into the hole. When they found him 2 days later, hanging on to a rope he had lassoed around a rock at the opening, he still had the horse squeezed between his legs. I don't know which of those stories to believe....but apparently the man who discovered the cave used to sell tours for $1 back in the early 1900's. For your $1, he would give you a candle, 24 hours to explore, and you could take out one souvenir when you left. You can still see a couple of parts of the cave that are actively growing, but years of tourism and souvenir-taking has left it pretty much as they found it over 100 years ago. We have a lot of lava caves around here....but it makes me wonder if a beautiful water cave like that one exists under our desert.
On the way we listened to a book on tape, a non-fiction story called "Angela's Ashes" about a man who grew up in poverty in Ireland during the 1920's. I can't say I recommend reading it, because it was incredibly sad and ends leaving you wondering what ever happened to the poor family when the man (the oldest boy in the family) leaves for America at the age of 18. I can't imagine I'd ever listen to it again, so whoever would like it, it's up for grabs.
We'll backtrack another day tomorrow, if I have the time to sit down and write. :)
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