Beau and Daisy Meet Goat Heads

Well, it's time to catch you all up on things I suppose. The adventures go on.

We finally pulled out of Big Brother's place on Monday about 1:30 - hurrah - we're on the road again - finally. Following a lunch stop at the local golf course we hit the highway and headed south. Our destination for the night was Deming, NM - a distance of about 175 miles. We didn't make it.

Somewhere along the highway between Alamogordo and Las Cruces we were hit by a very strong gust of wind strong enough that Ole had to grab tight to the steering wheel to keep from going in the ditch. It hit hard enough that it knocked this big rig over onto the rumble strip. As Ole managed to steer it back onto the highway we thought we had just hit a bad patch of road because the road noise was unusual. A few seconds later things seemed to have cleared up as the noise disappeared. Suddenly a woman in a little white car passed us flying by and waving her arms for us to pull over. She pulled ahead of us and stopped and Ole got out to talk to her. She indicated that we were throwing sparks all over. We didn't know that we'd blown a tire on the tow dolly because everything looked fine in the rear view camera. When Ole went back to check things out what was left of the tire was only shreds and the wheel was flat on one side. The fender on the tow dolly looked like a pretzel and I'm so fortunate that nothing damaged my car.

The problem was that it was getting close to 5 o'clock, starting to get dark and it was 60 miles to the nearest town. Ole managed to get the wheel off the mangled mess, threw it in the back of my car and off I went to catch up with Big Brother, who was already over the next several hills. I had called him, he had pulled off and was waiting for me. I followed him into Las Cruces where we found a Lowe's that had exactly what we needed and offered to let him leave his rig in their parking lot. Back the 60 miles in my car, after a stop to buy road flares and some burgers for supper as it was getting to be 7:30 and we were all hungry. When we finally got back to the rig it took the guys about 15 minutes to get everything back together and we were off again.

Lowe's said we could spend the night in their parking lot (thank you Lowe's) so we put out the slides and ran the dogs in a field that was close by. Then it was time for a toddy or two to relax a bit. I was the first one up this morning and discovered that our house batteries weren't sufficiently charged to even make a pot of coffee. That meant no toast either. So what does a woman do when she can't make toast or coffee? She goes shopping. I grabbed my purse and headed for the garden department of Lowe's.

Oh my gosh - it's just not fair. They had big orange poppies in bloom, primroses, pansies, trees that were blossoming - I want you all to know that I had a very difficult time holding myself back. I get that garden itch every once in awhile and for someone from the
Far North to see flowers blossoming in January makes that addiction very hard to control. But then I thought about dogger tails knocking the pots over and spreading freshly watered dirt all over and I decided I'd be better off leaving those flowers in the store. I did buy a couple of other things though, and wheeled the cart back to the RV to unload. Ole and Big Brother wheeled the cart back to the store for me and returned to the rig with a little blossoming primrose for me. So I do have a blooming flower and it's small enough to sit on the counter where dogger tails can't reach it!!

We had visions of reaching Gila Bend by tonight, but I guess we'll have to see if that will happen or not. We got a late start this morning - what with me losing control of my shopping addiction (me? shopping addiction? that's a real joke). But I guess we'll have to see how far we get today. Gila Bend is about 400 miles from Las Cruces so it's a full day's drive. And when you have dogger buddies along you travel slower than normal because they do need their potty breaks. It's much easier to travel with cats - - - -

Speaking of the doggers we're having issues. Yesterday we stopped at a truck stop to run the dogs. As soon as I get out of my seat, Beau has a habit of jumping into it, and Daisy into the driver's seat. Beau got a little bit over zealous when Ole opened the door and he took a dive from the passenger seat, missed all the steps and landed on his front legs, back legs in the air, on the asphalt. It's a good 6 feet from the passenger seat to the ground. I thought he was going to do a back flip before it was all over. He seemed to be fine until later than evening after he'd had a nap. When he got up he was pretty stiff, but we just thought he'd possibly strained a muscle. Today his shoulder joint is swollen but doesn't seem to feel like a pulled muscle. It almost feels like a large blood blister, and it hurts him to touch it. I wonder if he could have possibly ripped something and there's bleeding? The other thing that concerns us is that one of the places where we let them run was full of goat heads, unknown to us of course until it was too late. When Ole got them back to the rig Daisy could hardly walk and Beau seemed to be trying to walk on his tip toes. Ole sat down on the floor and started examining feet and pulled 15 goat heads from Daisy's feet and almost as many from Beau's. Daisy is still favoring one of her feet, but Ole said that one of the goat heads had already started to work its way in and he drew blood when he took it out. So hopefully that's all it is and it will be better by tomorrow. But poor Beau and his swollen shoulder - if he's not better by tomorrow we're going to have to find a vet to find out what's going on. I have lots of antibiotics along (cephalaxin) so depending on the situation I'll probably start giving drugs to both of them tonight. I sure don't need sick dogs and big vet bills when we're so far away from home.

During our travels late yesterday afternoon B4TBO (before tire blow out) we passed by the White Sands National Monument. If you've never been there, it's quite a site to behold. Ole and I were there several years ago and walked around on the white sand. Even went sledding down a sand hill. It's very difficult to make your brain realize that it's sand because it looks just like the snow drifts we have at home. Brrrrr.



Well, I guess we'll see how far we get tonight. We've still got a strong cross wind and I know that makes the guys exhausted from driving these big rigs and trying to hold them on the road. We drove through one area after leaving Deming, NM where there were sand storms. Not as bad this time as some of them we've been in, but Ole had to slow way down like when you're driving in a blizzard.

More later -

Love Lena