In which the sky is sunnyblue, and something gets lost (but now is found)

Early-on during our ride in the !SUNSHINE!  today, Duana figured out that Hana is so petite that her ears absolutely LOOM when she takes photos through them.  Her solution:

No, dude.  That posture doesn't look dorky at all.

 Since Fiddle is proportioned in dragonesque fashion, her ears remain at a polite distance in my photos. 

Classic photo: lovely ears but not right up in my lap!

Look at all the bright-sunnyblue above and complete lack of sn*w beneath! 

Bliss, complete and total bliss.

We took bunches of photos, but mine are mostly the same:  ears, ears, ears.

I did snap a few pictures of Duana and Hana.  Hana is very patient with Du's need to not trot while doing stuff with camera-phone.

Tell me you're taking photos, not playing Words-With-Friends!

We played the Follow-Me/Follow-You game to try to get Hana over her "dire" (fake) fear that Fiddle would leave her alone in the wilderness. 

We do this on a two-track logging road:  Hana and Du are in front, and then I say "okay, go" and Fiddle accelerates to get in front until I say "bring it back" so that Hana can pass us and be in front.  Then I let Fee go fast again, and so on.  When I'm holding the camera, I'm not giving any cues other than the verbals.

Fiddle has terrible wicked ears when she is passing, but they perk right up as soon as she is in front!  She also never broke out of a trot: she would extend when I told her to "go", and slow down when I asked her to slow.  I love that.  

It was so pretty and clear, we decided to ride up to the Monument to see how far we could see.

We could see Far. 

Far:  You can see it from here.

The strip of land just under the sky is Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.  In between the Canadians and us is visible Snohomish County and Skagit County.  You can also see Whatcom County at far photo-right.  If I turned the camera to photo-left, we would see King County.  Not bad for one hill in a big Swamp on a clear day!

The view is so much nicer with ears in the fore-ground!

Hana figured out that standing still so Du could mess with the camera photo

meant that she could graze.  And then, Duana could take photos of me and Fiddle!

This picture looks kind of wonky because we're standing on a slope!

Facebook photo!

 A jogger joined us up at the top for a few minutes, and took our picture together.

This is the least goofy-looking picture

 The apple in Du's pack was very popular.  Some of us were more enthusiastic than others.

WANT. THE. APPLE!

 We all took bites. 

Then I discovered that the keys to the truck, which usually ride in the front pocket of my pack, were NOT tucked into the front pocket of my pack.  Damn.

Instead of taking the usual loop-route back to the trailer, we backtracked the way we had come, making the entire journey about 14.75 miles (just-so-happened that today was the day I brought the GPS!)

Du thought Hana was tired. 
I think she was tired of looking for the stupid truck keys!

 We were mostly on open logging roads, so we didn't bother walking the entire thing--if I can't see a set of keys on a logging road while we're trotting, I've got bigger problems than missing keys. 

But we didn't find them....

Can you say "Aarene is a dork-muffin"?

Until we got back to the trailer: there they were, safe and sound in the lock of the trailer door.  Our good friend Katie said that she had parked right next to us and never noticed the keys.

We had decided that if the truck and trailer had been stolen, we weren't going to admit that I might have left them WITH the trailer--we were going to assert that they had fallen out of my pack.
Fortunately, we can save that story for later.  Everything was right where it should-oughta be.

And that is only one symptom of Life being Good.  Ya know?