Vacation, had to get away

Sky and I went down to Humboldt for a nice week o’ relaxation. It was so utterly needed that by the time to leave rolled around I was practically jumping out of my skin.

We were there for May Day which was a lot of fun – we went to a festival/fundraiser for his old elementary school. I got to hold a rabbit! Sky pet a sheep. We had delicious BBQ and hibiscus tea and watched all of the happy sunburned hippie kids run around having a good time.

Plenty of time was spent lazing around, reading. We read on the sunny porch. We read in the hammock. We read on the beach. We read in bed. We read while sitting in the outhouse. Yeah, I said outhouse. I made it a week without flushing a toilet and it was really kind of relaxing. One morning I was out doing my thing, reading some NYT article, and I saw a lone wild turkey strutting by. I think the rest of his pack had ostracized him, poor guy.

Which leads me to…

Jen’s List of Wild Animals She Saw This Week

• Wild Turkeys (5)
• Deer (14)
• Lizards (3, a family that lived on the deck, plus 39029 of them while hiking)
• Elk (0, because I was sleeping, but Sky saw 4)
• Rabbits (5) *
• Chickens (at least 15)*
• Baby Turkey (1)*
• Baby Ducklings (4)*
• Lamb (1 close up, many of them from the car)*

* OK, so not really wild, but I got to see them up close which was neat.

It was a Chickeny kind of trip. First we went to an Arts Alive! event that featured the work of a painter who specialized in chickens. I asked her how she got them to sit still and she said they were pretty stupid and that if you set them facing a wall they will quickly hypnotize themselves and stay still for an hour. The same event had a bunch of chickens and roosters for sale. We saw chickens at the May Day event, too. Sky got some BBQ chicken and one of the chicken legs got lost in our beach bag. It was pretty funny. Several other chicken things happened, but now for the life of me I can’t recall them.

And finally, a hammock shot. Enjoy.