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Laddy is recuperating nicely!

Last week Laddy had to have emergency surgery to remove a foreign object that he had swallowed.  He’s swallowed things before but they’ve always passed, this one didn’t.  We didn’t even know he’d swallowed something!  It was in his intestines for probably 3-4 weeks.

Since coming home from the hospital he’s had some trouble getting up and down the steps into the truck and into the trailer.  So, Jeff made a ramp for him and after his initial fear of it he’s using it very nicely.  Here are a coupl

e of pictures:

 

33-Southern Oregon, Places we Visit-Year 1

We’re now in Trail, Oregon

We traveled on Sunday into Oregon and are now at a campground in Trail, Or.  It’s a very small town right along the Rogue River, about 25 miles north of Medford and 5 miles north of Shady Cove.

We’re planning to visit Crater Lake and also see the area, but our plans have been disrupted a bit as Laddy has been sick.  It seems like he’s got the flu that Jeff and I had several weeks ago, he’s vomiting and can’t keep any food down and doesn’t have any energy.  After a day of not keeping even water down we called a local vet and they were able to see him the same afternoon, but they don’t know what’s going on.  The doctor gave him an anti-vomiting shot and we’re now watching him closely and giving him sips of water that he’s now able to keep down.  He has no interest in any food, and it’s been 2 days since he’s had any food.  But, he has a little more life in his eyes and is able to rest a bit more than yesterday when he mostly paced around in obvious discomfort.  If he can’t eat anything in the morning we’ll have to take him back to the vet and see if he can figure out what the heck is going on.

So…for now we’re just hanging around the trailer.  Hopefully in a day or two Laddy will be back to his usual energetic and happy self and we can get back to sight-seeing!

An update to this post on Thursday afternoon – Wednesday we took him back to the vet as he wasn’t showing any interest in any food, although he was keeping small amounts of water down.  They made him swallow barium and then took a series of X-rays as the barium flowed through his digestive system.  It showed a foreign object blocking his intestines quite a ways in.  He had to have emergency surgery but is recovering nicely and should be able to come home tomorrow or Sunday.  It’s apparently a cloth toy he ate a few weeks ago while we were at the Park of the Sierra.  We knew he’d eaten one and it passed within a day or so, so he must have eaten TWO things!  Argh!

32-Shasta Lake, CA, Just Photos

A caterpillar and a butterfly – both at Shasta Dam

While on a tour of Shasta Dam we saw a couple of beautiful butterflies, and later saw a caterpillar.

32-Shasta Lake, CA, Places we Visit-Year 1

Shasta Dam – we took a tour of the inside

We drove back to Shasta Dam today and took a tour down in the “guts” of the dam.  We didn’t know it’s the second concrete dam in the U.S. – and twice as big as Hoover Dam!

Here are some pictures of the dam:

32-Shasta Lake, CA, Places we Visit-Year 1

Mount Shasta – WOW!

We took a day and drive “around” Mount Shasta.  It’s very unique, at least to me, in that it is a mountain that is not part of a range, but stands alone.  We were able to get photos from several different vantage points as we drove around it.

Here are some photos:

Just Photos

Taking great photos with our new camera

Jeff recently bought a new camera and is having fun taking photos with it.  We decided we needed a new one while at Yosemite for the Moonlight Tour – our camera at the time had no way to adjust the shutter speed and none of the pictures came out.

Now Jeff has a really nice Nikon!

This new category of posts will include photos that Jeff takes just for the artistic nature of the subject.

Here are some to start off:

33-Southern Oregon, Places we Visit-Year 1

Lassen Mountain – a recent volcano that erupted twice in 1915

We took a day and drove southeast from where we’re staying to visit the Lassen Mountain Natl Park and Volcanic area.  The day was very cloudy and overcast unfortunately, but it was a real nice drive.

We were surprised to learn that Lassen Mountain exploded in two volcanic eruptions just in 1915 – which is a blink of the eye in geologic terms!

As we drive up into the mountain area it got colder and finally there was still a lot of snow on the ground.  We could only go as far as the “desolation area” and the rest of the road was closed until June.

The desolation area was what they called the area that was destroyed by the lava flow.  There are still lava rocks laying around where they landed when they were blown out of the mountain!

People lived in the area at the time of the eruption, one man was awakened by his dog and saw the mountain bulging and smoking.  He ran 3 miles to warn neighbors and they all would have died if they hadn’t gotten away as fast as they did.

He and some other people hiked up to see the damage 3 days after the eruption, and barely escaped again when it erupted again!

The mountain itself is fantastic – you can see that it was blown apart by a volcano due to the concave shape of it.

Here are pictures from our trip through the National Park and of the volcanic mountain, still covered in snow in early May!

32-Shasta Lake, CA, Places we Visit-Year 1

Shasta Lake Cave – a very interesting tour!

While at Shasta Lake we discovered they have a cave that is high up in the cliffs above the lake.  The tour starts across the lake with a boat ride, then a bus that goes up the cliffs about 800 feet to get to the entrance to the cave.

We were the only people on the tour (it’s still early in the season) but there were 75 2nd-graders there for a special kids tour.  We rode across the lake with them and on the bus with about a third of them.  Boy, that many 2nd-graders sure can get noisy!!  But they were all so cute!

We had a different tour guide than the kids as they had a special tour for schools.

The cave tour was very interesting – the “rooms” were at different levels and sometimes we had to walk a ways to get from one room to another.  We learned that the cave was discovered back in 1887 by a native American who was tracking a mountain lion that had been bothering livestock.  He climbed up practically sheer cliff walls following the lion and saw the cave opening.  Since he had no equipment for entering a dark cave, he went about his business and told some neighbors about the cave.  A year later he and a friend went into the cave and started exploring.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that much of the cave was really explored.  Two brothers, seeking to find additional rooms, blasted rock pretty randomly hoping to break into other rooms.  Sometimes they had clues such as air flow or water, sometimes they just decided to blast this wall or that wall.  They destroyed some of the formations doing this.  Since it’s privately owned, they installed steps and the early cave guides actually broke off stalactites by tapping on them with hammers to show the people on the tour.  They also allowed people to wander around on their own with just flashlights!  One ten-year old boy discovered the largest and most impressive room by accident because he was crawling around in the dark.  Yipes!

As we had climbed quite a few stairs while on the tour getting from one room to another, we had to go back down.  The part of the tour climbing back to where the busses waited for us was outside along the cliff wall where they had cut and made steps.  Beautiful views!  treacherous staircase though, narrow steep steps so I was careful going down and then would stop periodically to look around.

Here are some pictures Jeff took of the cave: