Well, just to give away the punch line right away, we are happily parked and living in Baba G in Bandon-by-the-Sea, Oregon with two lovely people (Tammy and Bob) who are teaching us natural building, with cob (already), straw bale (soon), and the hybrid bale-cob (soon). We've even done some foundation and plaster work! The next several posts will get you all caught up with our journey here from Colorado, and what we've been up to since then. But for now…
Our Favorite Furry Things, which of course includes the kitties but also some random wild and fluffy things we have met along the way.
Tigger: truly Nate's cat, four and a half years ago, he was a neighborhood stray who only showed up at my door when Nate was over. When we moved in together, we decided Tigger was with us to stay, and boy has his life been a whole lot more adventurous as a result! He has pretty much become the Alpha Cat of the trio. Here is Tigger contemplating Baba G, while it was still parked in Diana and Mike's backyard in the Keys:
I did NOT sign up for this!
Fink: my younger cat, who I firmly believe to be autistic. And, no, I am not kidding. He is the proverbial scaredy cat (except for shocking bold moments where he, for instance, strides right up to a dog and stands his ground), but he can always be soothed by throwing a blanket over his head. He is the Gamma Cat of our trio, poor guy. Here he is checking out the pile of tools and project stuff on the ground behind Mike and Diana's place, again before we left the Keys:
Why is our stuff all out here… and where is my blanket?
Pete: my older, fatter, lazier cat who has fallen to Beta Cat status because he is just no match for Tigger. He can be a real sweetheart and loves Nate to pieces, even though Nate loves to torment him fairly constantly. Here they are, taking a quick nap that, well, at least Nate deserved in the midst of the packing frenzy last July:
Zzzzzzzz…...
Before we left the Keys, the cats interacted a bit, but there was always some tension between Tigger and my guys. Nate and I both worried that things would worsen between them in the small space of Baba G. But, to our relief and surprise, they have bonded into a little cat pack! There is a very real phenomenon in which people who have survived a terrible experience together become closely bonded: I guess it works on cats too. ;-)
Pete susses out his escape plan from the Solar Ark
(he ran away into the desert a couple of days before we ran away from the Solar Ark!)
Pete and Tigger, bonded in terror under the "grandma chair" in Baba G
Fink looks out from the safety of his favorite hammock at Trails End, in New Mexico
And now we should probably include some of the other animals we've run into along the way (furry and not), lest we seem like crazy cat people:
Cute and curious foal often hanging out on the road to the Solar Ark
Nate does battle with a hilarious (and VERY stinky) goat in Jemez Springs, NM…
… for almost an hour!
(It took two washings to get the goat smell out of his jeans!)
Cows checking us out at Trails End in NM...
Tigger checking out the cows. (For the record, he is not a fan.)
Nate rescues a snake off the highway in La Cueva, NM!
Feeding the adorable alpacas at Aspen Ridge Alpaca Farm…
just a few minutes from where we camped at Trails End in La Cueva, NM!
Nate's best pic of an alpaca, perfectly framed.
Herd of elk hanging out near the highway at sunset (as we had been warned they would do), on the road back from Los Alamos, NM.
Gorgeous, gaudy grasshoppers (how do ya' like that alliteration?!)
at the City of Rocks State Park in southern NM.
Nate has his hands full with a pale ale, Pete, and Fink at Blackjack Campground in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest during the National Government Shutdown in October. Thankfully, the rangers left the campground entrance-- and restrooms!-- open. :-)
I cleaned up all the trash at our site, as a bit of thank you.
More Pete and Tigger under the grandma chair again: their favorite way to travel!
Tigger's first encounter with snow… and maybe Nate's fifth in Tres Piedras, NM!
Tigger in South Fork, CO: "OK, this is too much now. Make it go away."
Tigger toughs out the South Fork winter. (Pete and Fink mostly watched him from the windows. Which made them very tired. So they slept. A lot.)
We often saw mountain goats on the road between South Fork and Creede, CO.
Tofu-eating golden retriever who roamed our South Fork neighborhood for handouts.
Trap we had to set for a mother mouse whose nest was built in the Civic's hood insulation!
Here are the mouse pups! We relocated the whole family. :-)
And this is why you should always relocate rodents.
(Don't we have THREE cats? Sheesh.)
Tigger to Nate: "When are we hitting the road again, daddy-o? I wanna go surfing!"
Pete, on the other hand, did not seem eager to resume life on the road,
and tried to eat the moving boxes before we could repack them.
It was incredible how happy the cats were,
once we moved back into Baba G and hit the road again!
This campsite was in Saratoga, WY.
Mule deer (even a buck who had already dropped one antler) in Saratoga.
Fink scales a sheer rock wall at our free campsite in Cokeville, WY.
(I told you he has bold moments, right?)
Tigger enjoys sunset from the picnic table at our free campsite in Idaho Falls, ID.
Up Next: From Desert to Seashore, in Just 30 Days (Or, If it's Tuesday, this must be Bend)!
