Daisy's Adventures in Wonderland

Once upon a time there was a dog named Daisy. Daisy loved her toys.

She LOVED to ride in the car, whichever car it may be.

She also loved to camp, and when she was little, she was still allowed to sleep in the tent. :)

She loved to hang out at the Logsden Store, as long as she was close to the people she loved.

She loved to hang out on the couch, even if she had to share it with the cat.

She would go after snowballs in the winter, and tennis balls in the summer. There was never a bad time to swim for her.

She was quite goofy sometimes.

And she always wondered where I was.

As she got older, fetch became the past time of choice.

Or just running around, having fun.

But she still loved to lay on the couch, especially when she could put her butt on my pillow. :)

She loved hanging out in the van, and didn't get stressed or mad when it would break down. She would just sit with me and let me know it was going to be okay, even if we didn't know where we were.

I don't know if she liked that I made her pose by beautiful flowers, but she always would, just to humor me.

Although she loved hanging out with us inside.....

I think she was the happiest outside!

She loved to play on the beach!

She still loved to play everyday, even as her face became grey.

And she always took the time to smell the flowers as we passed them.

She was a great hiking partner!

Did I mention she LOVED to camp??!

Because she did!!!

Really, she loved to be around people she loved, whatever they were doing.

After twelve years and seven months of playing, camping, running, and living, Daisy became very tired and couldn't play anymore.

Although I am very sad and miss her very much already, I am so happy that I got to spend those hefty twelve years with her! She was the best friend I could have ever asked for, and I can't thank her enough for showing me how much I could love someone. Jered and I love you very much Daisy, and we hope you enjoyed your adventures in wonderland.

The End

The deer saved us some apples!

We got back from our vacation very surprised to find that the deer had left us some apples! We gave the tree a couple of shakes and most of these below fell onto the ground where we could easily pick them up.
We have since been making applesauce like crazy people, but I have used every single canning jar that I can find (and even bought 24 more). The wheelbarrow is still half full, but I am very confidant that we will make good use of every single apple! No pies or crisps have been made yet, so that is still on the list!

Below the apple tree was covered with half eaten and wasp infested half apples. Since there is quite an erosion issue around the apple tree anyway, we decided to pick up all of the "rotten" apples and put them in the front yard. It ended up being five or so buckets full of bad apples!

They are kinda acting like they don't even care, but most of the apples were gone by the next morning.

Vacation, Day 7, heading home

This is Daisy in a pet exercise area (off leash) at Lewis and Clark State Park. She was very excited.
We went to Sheri's to have breakfast (pancakes!!), where I came up with the brilliant idea to throw (drop) my credit card in the middle of the parking lot and just leave it there (although I didn't figure this out until way later).

Our final stop on our marvelous vacation was a stop at Knottliten Cottage! Awesome new fence!!

Vacation, Day 6

We drove north to Mt. Hood National Forest. We drove by multiple campgrounds, most of them were closed for the winter season. We found a spot, a little bit off the road, but deep within the trees right along the Hood River. The mountain air was cool and crisp, especially right by the water, so we were very excited.
We set up camp and hung around the river most of the morning. It was still cool into the afternoon, so we were confidant that we could leave Daisy behind with no worries that she would get too hot. We could see a pull off with a few cars about 1/4 mile after the turn off to our camp, so we had a pretty good idea that there may be some hiking around. Daisy was happy to stay and sleep the day away.

We walked along the river about 1/4 of a mile, and sure enough, we found a trail head. Waterfalls 2 miles ahead; and we were off!

Finally, some fall colors!

Sweet bridge

Red single on a yellow tree

And we made it!! Beautiful

The only thing missing in this picture is Daisy, but I am sure she was sleeping anyway :)

Vacation, Day 5

It was hard to leave the campsite, but there was still so much more of Oregon to see. We drove through and around Bend and looked at some houses that Jered had worked on (it was really cute), stopped at some stores and headed out of town. I have to say, those roundabout things all over the town would take some getting used to.
Bachelor, Broken Top, and another one I don't remember....

Smith Rock

Smith Rock

And seriously, one of the funniest signs that I have ever seen!!

So we pull up to this rest area (state park) and park to let Daisy go to the bathroom. I could get passed the fact that the two acres of super wonderful oasis like green grass were not to be used to have dogs poop all over, but the pet area was a little corner sand box. That is fine, Daisy doesn't care where she pees.

The sign, though, you could see when you first pull up in the parking lot. So we looked at the sign and were like, "wow, that is strange, I don't see a cliff anywhere". Then way far off in the distance, we could see groups of people on a walkway. I became so curious I made Jered stay with Daisy so I could go look at this place where 'many dogs have died'.

It takes me five minutes to walk over where the people are, and when I get there, I see a cobblestone fence/barricade that is blocking the edge (standing to at least waist high to me). I look over the edge......and wow......

It was a flippin long ways down there. I had to step back and take a breath before I looked again. Looking that way you could see a railroad bridge.

And looking the other way was the highway bridge. I was really surprised, but still unsure how so many dogs could have died here. Maybe before the barricade thing was built, but I would surely be more worried about any children around than I would be about a dog. Anyway, I walked back to the car and made Jered go look, the pictures don't even show how spectacular it was. It still seemed a little hard to believe that any dogs have died there, but it was a great laugh. We didn't walk Daisy over, even though I was pretty confidant that she would not jump over the cliff after a bird. And we moved on.

This vacation day was one of the hottest of the trip. The honda didn't like that at all, and just like on our honeymoon, it broke down. We sat on the side of the road for a bit, but then got brave and decided to try to make it to The Cove Palasades State Park. Since I hadn't been to the park before, I had no idea what to expect, but we ended up going down a super steep hill into the middle of a canyon. We passed one campground, but the sign said there were more ahead (and it was an RV campground) so we continued on. We made it to the next campground, and it was CLOSED (we saw the signs as we were leaving, but didn't help then :). We turned around and headed to the day use area, so we could give the car a break.

Dooh!! No dogs allowed here either! Should have looked at the signs before paying $5. We hung out there until the sun went down, then headed back to the RV park that we had seen earlier. It turned out to be a state park campground, so we were pros when it came to filling out our SRE (self registration envelope :).

This was our site, not very secluded, but still very pretty. We took multiple showers, which was very fun (super clean!). Camping has a totally different feel when you are within close quarters of others, so we were up and ready early the next morning to find another place we could call home for the night. We have learned over time that the Honda doesn't like to drive much after 4PM in the hot sun and in high altitudes. Crazy, coastal car!! :)