Category: Kentucky

Holiday Review

~ meh ~ Leave a comment

…and we’re back from the Lull.

A summary of what’s new:

We stuck around town for the holidays, Christmas Eve was our one year anniversary (Paul took me out to dinner and his brother Karl was nice enough to be our chaufer).  We woke up to fresh snow Christmas morning for our walk over to the inlaws.  

Paul and Spike in the front yard, Christmas day

Paul got me a pink Wicked Witch of the West commuter bike to ride around town, which has been great because I can now ride to work instead of walk.  Cuts my commute down by like 20 minutes.  Awesome.   Paul got P90X, which he has started doing every day, but because he refuses to let me see him do it (he just stops cold if I walk in the room and yells at me to get out…I guess it involves a lot of jumping and weird positions or something?) I still have no idea what it is.   Spike got a huge stuffed dog with squeakers in both hands, which he carries around the house with him all day long.

We rang in the New Year with my friend Kristin, some pizza from Mello Mushroom, and Paul and Drew.  I discovered the Fx Camera App on my phone (a little late, I know) and promptly became obsessed.

new years eve

new years day

fishbowl

 

rainy day walk

With the new year also came a new wave of motivation to figure out exactly what I am going to do here in Kentucky for the next few years (besides cook poorly and try not to get shot by hunters while hiking.)  While my current job at the University is great for the short term and I am truly grateful to be gainfully employed, I am still looking for something more permanent.  

Onward and upward!

Tick tock

~ meh ~ 2 Comments

According to the vet, it is not tick season.  So it was weird that last night, as we were getting ready to go to bed, we found 5 on Spike.

I’ve never had to pull ticks off a dog (one of the perks of growing up in Southern California.)  The only tick I’d ever really seen was in my sister’s ear.  I thought it was a spider and the experience disturbed me deeply. 

Some facts about ticks:

  • Ticks are arachnids (so it wasn’t totally ridiculous that I thought the tick in my sister’s ear was a spider).
  • The most common ticks that your dog will pick up in North America is called the dermacentor variabilis, and does not carry Lyme disease.  It can, however, carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
  • The deer tick is the one you have to watch out for, that’s the one that carries Lyme disease and is found mostly in the Northeast.
  • Once ticks get in there they hold on pretty tight (their legs have teeth…so gross), so the best way to get them out is to kill them without squishing them, because then they will let go and fall off.   Certain chemicals will also make the tick loosen their grip.
  • I was talking to a guy this morning that grew up on a farm and apparently it’s ok, so long as you get most of the tick off, if there is a leg left in the dog.  

 Some suggestions from friends and the internet on the best way to kill ticks included:

  • Put a match to the tick and pop it
  • Suffocate the tick with rubbing alcohol
  • Suffocate the tick with clear nail polish

We figured a match to the dog’s head was probably not the best idea, we had no rubbing alcohol, and I couldn’t find my nail polish anywhere (probably still packed).  We tried every cleaning product in the house (most of which were eco-friendly…probably didn’t help our cause), toilet bowl cleaner, and Paul’s cologne.  Suckers WOULD NOT die.  So we did our best with a pair of tweezers, but every single one left their disgusting front clampers in poor Spike.  So gross. 

Time to invest in tick medicine and rubbing alcohol.

Update: my coworker, who grew up in Eastern Kentucky, just told me a story about how she had a tick attach itself to her EYE, above and below.  So when she opened her eye it would block her vision, she said her eyelashes would brush it.  They used mineral oil to get the tick to let go.

Kentucky Hike #2: Rockcastle–Cumberland Confluence

~ meh ~ 2 Comments

Location: Laurel County, Daniel Boone National Park

Distance: 4.5 miles

Entry Fee: $0

The trailhead for this hike is located about 90 minutes south of Lexington next to London, KY, home of the World Chicken Festival, which attracts 250,000 people annually.  This hike is actually supposed to be a 9 mile loop, but once we saw the conditions of the trail we figured a shorter out and back might be a safer alternative, so that’s what we did.

We left our apartment around 8am on a beautiful Saturday to get there with plenty of time to get back for Ben Sollee, who was playing at a bar downtown that evening.  On the drive there we saw a person run across the freeway–a guy in an orange hat and camo carrying a shotgun.  Things to know when you go into the Kentucky woods any time between September and March: bring your gun and your dying deer whistle…it’s hunting season.

Once we hit London and started in on the back roads.  First thing I noticed: there were quite a few pickups sporting that deer antler decal and guys wearing orange hats and camo with racks of guns….drinking.  At 9am.  At this point I started to get nervous and tried to get Paul to seriously consider whether it was safe to hike back in the woods with a bunch of gun-toting drunkards trying to shoot large animals (I wasn’t convinced.)

We pulled over to a convenience store on the side of the two-lane road to ask.  The lady inside the store, which was lined with animal heads, had this response:  “You’re going HIKING?  You’d best be wearing orange.”

Two florescent orange beanies later we were ready to go.  We also asked her if it would be safe to let our small dog off the leash.  Long pause.  “Should be OK.  It’s deer season.  Squirrel season doesn’t really begin until December.”

I was less than thrilled about the situation.  The only thing we had going for us is it is gun season, not crossbow.  I’d rather be hit with a bullet than an arrow.

The book said that at the trail head we’d find an “unpaved parking area.”  I envisioned a gravelly or dirt clearing.

We drove by it twice before we saw it.  We got out of the car to find that on the post at the trail head were these two signs:

At this point, I was so not feeling this hike.  While Paul was trying to convince me that bears don’t have babies until the spring, so the odds of one attacking us were slim, and I was going over the sign reviewing what we were supposed to do should we come across an aggressive bear (face the bear, but do not look him directly in the eyes, never turn your back) and how to avoid falling tree-tops, we heard a gunshot.  It took some serious coaxing and a promise that we would keep Spike on the leash for Paul to get me back out of the car and on the trail.

The book said this hike is best in spring and as soon as we entered the woods we saw at least one reason why.  With all the leaves that had recently fallen, the trail was completely gone.  So we forged our way through some nasty sharp nettles and vines and made our way down to Ned Branch Creek which, according to the map, we could follow for a few miles to a campsite.

The rock formations at Rockcastle are pretty amazing, and there were some awesome pools on the way.

We kept Spike on a leash for the first 45 min or so, but after getting tangled around one too many tree trunks, we figured he wouldn’t go that far, so we took him off and let him run free.

We made it to the campsite, ate, and after a few wrong turns made our way back to the car.  On the way home, we contemplated stopping at the local eatery:

…but we didn’t.  Overall, seeing as how we call came out alive and un-maimed, I considered the hike a raging success.  Someone crashed on the ride home.

Lessons learned: there is such a thing as bullfrog hunting season (May 21-Oct 31).  And you can hunt wild hog year round.

Flora and Fauna:  Hillbillies with guns.