We're HOME!!!

Well, we made it home and had dinner with the kids for my birthday last night. Hubby ordered a birthday cake (whipped cream topping) and there was chicken, steak, and artichokes for dinner. While traveling and seeing new things is fun, it is good to be home today. I took my weed wacker out front and wacked away! My African daisies are in full bloom now and my California poppies are ready to open. This first crop of sunflowers is quickly blooming and falling over. My blue jay still is in the neighborhood, and, alas, so is the Cooper's hawk. I like to feed the birds out in my front yard and Mr. Hawk now claims my hard as part of his overall territory. Every now and then I find dove feathers scattered about, and it's not from the cats! The cats and dogs are glad we are home. Ripley, our black lab, jumped up on the bed last night and squiggled all over! Then, she settled down for a long night's nap, while we had two cats on our pillows! They all shared the bed nicely with us. Here are some photos of our trip home yesterday. From Bishop to Palm Desert took about 5 hours, and we stopped in Lone Pine for coffee and a snack and stopped in Kramer Junction to buy gas. We took a detour through Barstow and down Highway 247 to Yucca Valley, hoping to avoid the weekend traffic on Interstate 15 and the Cajon Pass. It was interesting to see the amount of snow on our local mountains, Mt. Gorgonio and Mt. San Jacinto. They have about as much snow on them as do the Sierras, down by Lone Pine. While they certainly don't have as much snow as, say, the Sierras above Mammoth, they still have retained their snow from the latest storm, last week. And, of course, we couldn't resist this field of horses and mules not far out of town in Lone Pine. We were guessing that they were pack horses, who summer at the higher elevations, and were brought down for the winter as they were all very friendly! Of course we had to stop and talk to them and pet them! We're getting ready to go up and see our horses this afternoon. It will be so good to see them! It's been two weekends since I last visited them! BAD HORSEY MOM!