Day 205

We got up early today and went over to the ATV rental place.  They had a Ranger that was smaller than the one we have.  It ran well though.

We started out driving out a forest road to a trail to an arch.  The road was terrible in places.  Lots of very sharp rocks and ruts.  There were people driving cars on it.  I couldn't believe it.  When we got to the trail we started out.  The trail went through the bottom of a forested canyon.  Lucy had fun running around.  She even scared up a couple of lizards.  After half an hour we hadn't got to the arch, so we turned around.  When we got back to the road we found out that the trail was 1.75 miles long.  There was no way we were going to get there and back in a reasonable amount of time.  It was a nice walk in the forest though.

We got back in the rig and went to a trail.  That involved several miles of pavement, and then some more on a well graded forest road.  We turned off that road onto a trail (really a jeep track).  We were running late, so we called to extend the time (all in all it cost $370).  Most of it was easier to drive than the forest road to the arch.  There was one really nasty descent into a wash.  The scenery was great and there were some cool purple cactus flowers.

Three weird things.  First, my belt buckle broke while I was sitting in the ATV.  That sucked because I had to hold up my pants for the rest of the trip.  Second, my camera refused to focus either automatically or manually.  I put it away disgusted.  At the next stop I tried it and it was fine.  Who knows?  Third, we had to guess on the trail at one point.  The ATV people had a great picture set that described every intersection except one.  Luckily we chose the right way.

After the trail we stopped at come Indian ruins.  They wouldn't let Lucy go there, but the caretaker offered to hold her.  We went up and took some pictures.  You could tell the rich people.  They had the houses under the big overhang.  The poor people had smaller overhangs, or no overhang at all.  I bought a t-shirt from the lady that took care of Lucy.

We then went to another Indian ruin.  The ruin was in good shape, but they wouldn't let you go within 400 or 500 feet of it.  They also had another cave with pictographs.  They were really cool and I got some nice pictures.  They wouldn't let Lucy there either and there was no one to take care of her.  So Ellen stayed at the ATV with her.  Ellen was tired and sore from yesterday and the morning.

As we were about to leave the ruin I noticed that Lucy had a whole bunch of red spots, maybe ant bites, on her belly.  So we high tailed it back to the ATV place.  I would have liked to go to one other place, but oh well.

The vet in Sedona couldn't take her, so we drove Lucy 20 miles to the next town.  The spots turned out to be all over her body.  They did a whole bunch of tests.  The good news is that they didn't find anything serious.  The bad news is that they don't know what's wrong.  They suspect that she ate some rat poison, so that's what they are treating her for.  We'll find that out from a test tomorrow.  We have no idea when she might have gotten into some, but she eats questionable things all the time.

We're going to Boulder tomorrow.  That's a large urban area, so if she needs special care it should be available there.  She going to hate it though.  The vet said no swimming.