Waste Land

Getting up this morning was slow. I stayed up way too late last night at the HSU percussion recital. JoJo and I had a great time listening to all those wonderful performances and dancing the night away to the Calypso band! So getting up this morning was indeed slow. We decided to take a walk and run the dogs to help us get going. Fish and Game has created a new hunting area down in the Loleta bottoms near the mouth of the Eel River. This sounded like a great place to go let the dogs run free while we got the sunshine we needed. We walked a couple of miles out on the dike through the slough area. The tide must have been out because there were huge mud flats everywhere. This picture shows what the area was like. This close up shows you just how much dry mud was out there! Soon the dike came to an end and we had to forge our way through some low lying scrub brush and berry bushes to make our way back to the car.












We trudged along for an hour or so. I took some beautiful photos of wild flowers.



Played with the dogs in the little ponds.
Just as I was stooping down to take another photo Gus shot out a warning to me.

"You might want to get out of the brush because we just found ticks climbing up our shoes and pant legs."

Sure enough, I looked down and saw several of these disgusting creatures making their way up my pant legs!

UGH! I ran out of the vines, tore off my shoes and socks, emptied my pockets tearing off my pants and stripped down to my undies! I found a couple more climbing up my legs, too!
So after de-ticking myself as best I could considering my circumstances, I put my clothes back on and announced to those whom were with me that I would now be walking in the mud flats and that I would not go back in the brush again!!!

Little did I know that I was being watch by an audience of cattle who seemed to be confused at seeing a human behaving in such a frantic manner.
I looked over at them and demanded to know what they were looking at, but they didn't answer.