Checking In!

Hey everyone! I’m halfway through my vacation and thought I would check in. I’m using a MacBook, which means there may be plenty of typos in this post because the keyboard is so flippin’ small. It’s made for a 6-year-old pair of hands, not a 40-year-old pair of hands.

The trip has been awesome. Flew without a hitch to Vegas last Thursday night, and literally just crashed into the hotel bed for the night. My hotel was about as far from the Strip as one can get, but it was $40 for the night and comfy, so it worked for me. In the morning I got up, had breakfast, and headed to the Hoover Dam for a couple hours. The tour was fun, and the dam was certainly impressive. And I can now say I’ve been to one of the Wonders of the World!

From there I went to the airport to pick up my friend Meredyth from the airport. As soon as we picked up her luggage we were off to the timeshare in St. George, Utah. The directions from Google were a disaster and we had to stop twice for directions – and each time we were within 1/2 a mile of the place when we stopped to ask. We just couldn’t FIND it! The timeshare is decent. It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath condo type of place. It’s clean, the kitchen is full-sized, and the location is beautiful (mountains all around). The first night I had no cellphone coverage but it’s been okay since that first night. Once settled into the timeshare we went to go get groceries for the week and then just chilled out.

Saturday was DOGTOWN DAY. We drove the 90 minutes to Best Friends Animal Society. Okay, it was more like 2 1/2 hours because ONCE AGAIN our Google directions took us in the completely wrong direction and we went AN HOUR out of our way. But we made it in time for our orientation and then headed up to DogTown for the afternoon. We only walked a couple dogs but it was fun nonetheless. The dogs there are precious. They are mainly older dogs, and on the larger side. We walked Ogy and Purdy. Very sweet dogs.

Sunday was Cat World day. We spent the whole day in cat land. We cleaned one area that housed about a dozen cats. They had both an indoor room filled with beds, toys, food and litter, as well as a huge outdoor area that had more toys and tons of great perches and hiding spots. A few of the cats in that room had physical problems (blindness, paralyzed back legs), but they were ALL cute. My two favorites were a black cat named Kyra and a red cat named Timmy. They both crawled in my lap and demanded petting at some point, and I gladly sat and did exactly that until they got bored and moved on. *lol*

Meredyth and I both agreed at the end of the day that we preferred DogTown. The reason? CAT PEOPLE ARE CRAZY, Y’ALL. Seriously. Some MAJOR weirdness that day. The dog people seem so laid back and easygoing, whereas the cat people were very particular about the cats. Strange.

That night we went out to see a movie. We saw “The Blind Side,” which I loved. What a great story.

Yesterday was my day to spend with the horses. Meredyth went back to DogTown. My morning with horses was okay – I encountered Crazy Horse People though, who kept speaking baby talk to the donkeys. I found that quite annoying. A donkey doesn’t care if you live or die – why on EARTH would you babytalk to it? Fortunately things improved after lunch. The Crazy Babytalking Horse People who were volunteering with me went off to work at Cat World, and I was joined with two freshmen in college who were AWESOME. Our BFAS caregiver was Margaret and her dog Kiva – what FUN the afternoon was! Sure, we mucked out pastures (poop scooping on a much larger scale), but we also got to groom a horse for a while and some of them loved to be petted. All in all a very satisfying experience yesterday afternoon. If you go to Horse Haven to volunteer, try to do it when Margaret is working. She is a GREAT individual and her dog is AWESOME.

Today we’re taking it easy. Meredyth’s allergies have struck her pretty bad in the past 24 hours and her lips are swollen to twice their size (very Angeline Jolie). She’s going to call her doctor to see if he can call in a prescription for her to pick up. Since we only have one car, it’s not like I can head off to DogTown and leave her – I wouldn’t be back until late afternoon and she’d have no way to get her prescription. So in a bit I’ll be calling to cancel our day at DogTown and advise them that we’ll be back tomorrow. Seeing as DogTown gets tons of volunteers, it shouldn’t be a problem.

The rest of the week will pretty much be the same. More animals through Thursday, and then Friday we check out from the timeshare and head to Vegas for the day/night.