Saturday, August 11, 2012

Take the Long Way Home

My partner, Wuotan, and I had a fun girls' day out with her mother today. After catching a morning showing of Hope Springs, the three of us wandered around town checking out antique stores. While ogling beautiful furniture, drooling over very old books, and parading around in a big, floppy hat, I managed to find a gorgeous glazed porcelain pig that I just had to buy.




I also picked up a few really cool, old books:

  • Tour of the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (copyright info page is missing, so not sure of publish date, but it's in really good condition otherwise and I'm excited to have it)
  • The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (2nd printing, 1927 - in excellent condition)
  • North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindburgh (9th printing, 1935)
  • Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott (1926)
  • Little Minister by J.M. Barrie (publish date unknown)

With all of the exploring done, we stopped for lunch and then retired to Mom's house to relax and chat for a while before Wuotan and I left for the long drive home. Instead of the straight shot up the freeway, which takes about an hour and a half, we decided to take the scenic route home and meandered through the hills and valleys at a leisurely pace, finally arriving home about 3 hours later.

Our traveling adventure took us through several different types of habitat. First, we hit the flat farmlands where we stopped for a few minutes to watch a family of Burrowing Owls who hid on the far side of a berm but popped their little heads up once in a while so we could see that there were at least three of them - one adult, whose large yellow eyes stared us down for quite a while, and two youngsters who still had a bit of baby-fluff on the tops of their heads. Then we headed out through some wooded areas where we saw several coveys of California Quail running across the road or up the hillside with their little topknots bobbing like crazy. Elsewhere, there were a few rafters/gangs/gobbles of Wild Turkeys (those are all three acceptable terms for a "flock" of turkeys) and a few deer - a doe with her fawn, who was still growing out of her spots, and, further down the road, a gorgeous buck with pretty nice-sized antlers. The last critter we saw before returning to suburbia was a lone coyote prowling on a hillside. He stopped and scratched his ear lazily before trotting up into the dried brush where his reddish-brown and grey coat blended in so well that he all but disappeared from view.

It is so wonderful to have a partner who appreciates the beauty of nature and who enjoys accompanying me on these little forays into places off the beaten path!


1 comment:

Ninja said...

Thank you for sharing this description of your day! It sounds so beautiful and relaxing, I could almost imagine being there! Keep enjoying life <3

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