Friday, May 29, 2009

Cattle Catcher Practice

I've been a lazy blogger lately, so I apologize that I am doing all of my catching up today while it is raining outside. We have just had so much fun here that I want to be sure to capture it before we leave and I forget some of it.

Some of you will remember the damage done to our truck due to things that go bump in the night and how Nathan decided to fix that damage in Texas. For those that don't-in short, we have a lovely cattle catcher on the front of our truck. As if a F-350 dually isn't eye catching enough on its own, we now have more evidence of manly manliness in the form of a vehicle. I've actually gotten used to it. That or I just ignore it, in the same way I ignore the stares of people (except in Texas) who can only imagine why I drive this vehicle when there are so many other choices. I still find it to be a tad bit of an impractical addition to the truck though.

Until now. We now have an opportunity to pretend that we need this piece of gear on our truck. Because the road leading into Thousand Trails here has cattle roaming across it. We first encountered them the other day while I was chatting with my travel buddy on the phone. I interrupted myself to let her know there was a bull next to our truck. Since I had the phone in hand, I could not snap a picture though.

Yesterday was my chance:You'd have thought I never saw such creatures as I squealed something along the lines of "Cow, cow, cow, cow". They were less excited about me than I was them:
Truth be told, they seemed downright annoyed that we were driving on their road:Even the babies (awwwwww) seemed to be annoyed by our being in their area. This would have been really interesting if we were pulling the RV and this happened. We pull out tomorrow so I'll have to let you know if we get to weave around them with our house behind us.Just a little fun fact, I had no idea until we got here that Arizona is a big dairy state. I've been paying around $2.00 for a gallon of milk. Contrast that to almost $5.00 a gallon that we were paying in Florida when we left 10 months ago. I've been thrilled with that price, although sadly, ice cream has not followed suit. If ice cream were that cheap, I'd have to find an excuse to stay here even longer.

Living the life in Arizona!

5 comments:

laurie l. goodman said...

i'm with ya on the ice cream!
it's so neat what you can come across-i would have been excited too!
hey, brace yourself for california pricing on food...ugh...we resorted to target for basics, canned goods, crackers etc., and sometimes walmart- for pricing..get one of the discount cards for the place you frequent- it doesn't cost anything, but you need an address to fill out the forms, sometimes they would give us the card and tell us to fill the form out when we felt like it- but boy, did we get a collection: ralphs, albertsons, safeway i dunno, it's all a blur- o- vons ... in cali, it really helped us save on certain items- but we were surprised at cost of food there-it would be cheaper for us to buy produce from cali in ontario, canada!!! anyways, you'll figure it out i'm sure. enjoy the trek!

Katie said...

We could always buy an ice cream maker and make our own with the cheap cream ;)

unschoolermom said...

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who hasn't been blogging enough lately. LOL.

That is definitely not a bad price for milk! We go through a lot of milk a week!

Kandy

jaci said...

Them thar cows ain't dairy cows! Them are BEEF cows. You gots a hereford and a charlait and probably a few mix. All range cattle.

Growing up where it was Open Range, I can tell you this: SLOW DOWN when you see them thar cows on the side of the road. They can dart right on out in front of you and if it is Open Range country -- it's YOU that owes the cattle rancher money, not him that owes you for the damages to said vehicle.

Good blog.

Sorry about the flat tire!!!

Show Us The World said...

Jaci, you amaze me with the things you know about animals. I didn't take it they were dairy cows, but it's neat to know exactly what they are.

We definitely were moving beyond SLOW-not because I knew that I would be responsible to the cattle rancher if something happened but because they are HUGE and intimidated us.

Very neat to be that up close and personal. Kind of like an animal safari experience. Well, kind of like that if you are a city girl. =)