The Trip Today

 Well, the trip north today was an hour and a half, to the clinic.  And by the time I got home about 6:00 p.m., I knew I've got to get my car in to a mechanic.  It was really pinging up a storm on the way home.

I spent almost 4 hours up at the RV park above Sweet HOme yesterday late afternoon and evening, trying to catch five cats.  Things didn't go so well.  The unfixed two boys did not show up.   Well, I'll just say there were a lot of snafus.  But finally I had four and then called a woman nearby with a colony I hadn't started yet and she caught one of hers quickly.  So I took five up this morning.  I left at 6:00 a.m.

Traffic was terrible from the start, so many cars, and if you go even 75, you will be the slowest car on the freeway, as I was.  I was shocked at the speeds people were driving and even tailgating.  Different world.  I was shocked by the sheer volume of traffic too, at that hour.  Usually you don't see that many cars til you are near Portland.   But this time, it was from Albany and on.

So it was a rather fast trip to the clinic.   I checked them in at the small clinic/shelter tucked at the end of a three plex of business's.   Once I left the clinic, I headed to Hagg Lake which wasn't far up the road.    I had no food or anything.  I had my shorts in case I decided to swim.   

I didn't swim.  I went for a walk, about two miles, even though I had no sturdy shoes, just sandals and the terrain was rocky and rutted.   Then I laid out a blanket and fell asleep.   The yellow jackets were everywhere and eventually I left because of them.    The lake was reduced in volume vastly.  It's a reservoir and lots of the water has been let out this time of year.  The banks are exposed and near the water, its mud.

It's a very beautiful area, with lots of trails.  

Clinic window

Henry Hagg Lake in Scoggins Valley

The cats I took were three girls, a boy and a big black boy from the RV park who turned out to be already neutered and even had a microchip.  The sad thing about the chip is, however, when the clinic called the chip company with the number, the information didn't match the cat.   The cat was registered as Patches and white with black "patches".   Nonetheless, they called the Florida owners' number attached to the chip number imbedded in the all black male.   He was confused.  He'd never been to Oregon and had lost his cat a year ago in Ohio.    And his cat wasn't black.  It was white with black patches.   The chip company also said the chip was placed by Heartland Humane, and they're in Corvallis.   My tired brain can't figure what went wrong there, but both cats, the RV park boy and the lost cat from Florida will never be found via chip info, that is for sure.

This is the already neutered boy

Black female teen.   The cats got left ear tipped at this clinic.

Tabby female

Torbi female

This is the male Siamese mix from the other Sweet HOme colony

On the way home, I got lost, going a different way to avoid Portland congestion and trusting the maps app, that somehow decided I could shave a few minutes off going backroads.   And then I lost cell signal way up in some windy steep curvy hills.   There'd been nowhere to turn around or even pull off, to figure out where the hell I was by now.  The map app then crashed.  Great, I thought.  I pulled into a remote vineyard gravel driveway.  There was a man beside a sheet rock van.  I asked him where I was and how to get back to 99 or 219.  He told me to go back the way I came and stay to the left then go about three more miles and I'd find the highway.   I did, despite the road narrowing and curving and turning to one lane to go under a trestle, making me wonder, is this the right way, really.   But then I hit 99 and could navigate from there.    The sheet rock guy who directed me could barely speak English but somehow we communicated and I found my way as a result.  Sure beat the maps app!  He knew his backroads.  The map app never worked again all the way home.  Thanks, stupid electronic navigator, for nothiing!  Lol.

Glad to be home.    I'll return all the cats in the morning.  And yes, I have to get the car into a mechanic.  I hate that because I have to be without transport while its in the shop, find rides back and forth to the mechanic, all that.