Friday, 3 - Sunday, 5 May 2019
It rained - sometimes really hard - for much of these 3 days. By Sunday morning, I was feeling actually desperate to change campsites. As I'd expected, my site had turned into such a mud hole that even when it wasn't raining, the dogs and I couldn't go for a walk without wading through inches-deep mud. Plus we were backed by towering pines and it would have been a wonderful campsite in the middle of the summer. But we aren't in the middle of the summer - in fact, spring is still coming to northern Ohio - so it was dark and dreary there.
First thing Sunday morning I called the office and begged them to let me move to another site that I'd been noticing. It was high and dry and had plenty of gravel and looked sunny and was everything my current site wasn't. They hemmed and hawed for a bit because for some reason they'd closed that part of the campground, but they finally called me back and said sure go ahead. So we moved. Big difference.
It was so much drier there that I could let the dogs out on long leashes.
Yeah and that was another little problem. A young woman with a golden retriever was staying in a site not far away, and when she walked her dog our way Dexter got really excited as he tends to do. This time, though, he broke his collar and went charging after the dog, scaring it to death, and by the time I got outside I found the young woman with this big golden retriever in her arms. She must have been strong. Once I reassured her Dext is actually friendly, she put her dog down and Dext did demonstrate friendliness, but by then the poor dog was too panicked to do anything but cower - poor thing.
It's lucky Dext is actually a moderately obedient dog when he uses his brain because I don't know how I'd have gotten him back without a collar to grab onto. I fished out an old collar from my bag of pet stuff stored in my downstairs storage area and fastened him up again and went back inside.
And an hour or so later I went back outside to bring the dogs in and found Dexter gone. His leash was lying on the ground almost where I'd left him and looked intact. So I instantly had visions of him being gone like he was at Blackwater Falls in WV, where I had to drive around and call and hunt for him for ages. But I called him a few times and presto! he showed up looking all excited and happy. Thank goodness he usually comes when he's called.
I have no idea where he'd been but he brought into the RV a very distinct smell of manure and I was almost ready to pull up stakes and go find a dog grooming place (open on Sundays, fat chance), or in the alternative get out the dry doggy shampoo or the doggy-safe deodorizing product I've got stored down below. But after a bit, the smell went away. When I first realized it, I thought maybe I'd just gotten used to it. But I think it actually did dissipate.
Anyway, all I can figure is that I didn't completely fasten him to that leash, so this time was my fault, not his. I'm a little leery of letting him out now, though - 2 incidents in one afternoon - I was lucky the campground wasn't more populated than it was.
Because spring is still unfolding here, I'm seeing birds that are migrating or are arriving for breeding season. These are two of my favorites that I saw.
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| Eastern Towhee |
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| Blue-winged Warbler |
You may remember I saw a Towhee in a campground in maybe Delaware? - maybe last fall? They're so pretty and easy to identify.
But this little yellow guy - I got really good looks at him so it was easy to find him in the bird book. In this picture (these are both off the internet), his wings seem prominent but in real life all I could see was a bunch of yellow flickering around. Warblers tend to be active, but this guy was nice enough to sit still several times so I could find things like those wingbars to identify him with. Just beautiful and cheerful to see.
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