Anniversary time

It's official, we have lived in Ely for an entire year! We arrived around 11pm on June 30th, so July 1st was the first full day in town. I am getting used to it here, but sometimes I still feel like crying. Yesterday afternoon we went on a scenic drive called Success Loop. It's about 30 miles long and one end is about 10 minutes south of Ely and the other end is about 5 minutes north of McGill (it's a little town about 15 minutes north of Ely.) The portion of the drive that's considered the McGill side is definitely prettier. It's greener (in the Nevada sense of the word) and you have a narrow valley with rolling hills. Once you hit the summit of the drive the scenery goes downhill a bit, but is still pleasant.

Jack came with us, of course, and enjoyed looking out the window. At one particular point when we spotted some cattle on the road Brien slowed down and said, "Jack, what's that?" At that moment Jack jumped out of the window, and rolled along on the ground for a moment. We had been going about 30 mph and it would have been at least a 4 foot drop for him. He stood up and started barking at a cow and herding it back a little. Brien stopped the truck and opened the door for Jack to get back in, but he refused and instead ran past Brien to herd the other cows that were next to the road. We had to drive up and call for him for a few minutes before he would return to the truck. I was willing to leave in him out there and check back for him in a day or two.

Jack, running away to be a cowdog.

We also stopped and had a picnic dinner. This photo is to show the scenery, not me. For the record I am not picking my nose, you will see this if you enlarge the photo. I have been congested for about 2 weeks now and I was rubbing my nose when Brien decided to take this photo. I wanted him to take another picture, but to quote him, "No, this one will be fine." After playing with the idea of blacking myself out in photoshop I decided to give the orginal photo.



This is to show that I am nicer than Brien about taking people's pictures.


On another Jack note, we were discussing whether the dog could survive in the wild; a few minutes later he killed a poor little chipmunk. Brien moved it to a tree so Jack wouldn't be able to play with it.

Jack doesn't know that if he would jump up he could reach his fresh kill.

This is a close up of the dead chipmunk in the branches.


So we had a fun Saturday. After getting home we all went for a walk, since we didn't hike during the scenic drive.