Happiness is Sunday at the Creek

I had the most wonderful day with my Mum and Dad today. After breakfast at my favorite restaurant, where everyone knows my name, we took a trip to my favorite creek.

Everywhere is very green.

And the crayfish are back, bigger than ever.

They hide out under the rocks and along the edges.

But they're no match for me. I can catch them by the hundreds!

Shaking the water out of my ears.

It's just deep enough for me here. I can swim if I want.

Or I can keep my feet on the bottom.

The grass is so long now, it was easy to slope off without Mum and Dad seeing me. At least, I thought they couldn't see me. Sometimes I think Mum has eyes in the back of her head!

Sometimes it's nice to just sit on the bank and watch the fishes with Dad.

And a good time was had by all

Boy, does that vacation seem a long time ago! Like it wasn't even this summer. I don't know why we couldn't stay there all the time in those nice, cool mountains. Now I'm confined to the house most of the day as it's HOT and STICKY here. I don't like it one bit.

You're probably wondering if we chased off that coyote yet. Well, it's still around, but hasn't been too bothersome recently, which is good, because the Fish and Game people have been a bit busy with another visitor.

This guy doesn't live around here anymore.

But let's get back to my vacation.

Of course, I got to ride in the front seat most of the way. It's my favorite place to ride, even though my travel bed is in the back, I just go there if I'm really tired. That's usually on the way home. Actually, I think Mum should ride in the back because she takes up more than her fair share of the front seat when she insists on riding in it with me.

Some of the time I do have to be in the navigator's seat, helping Dad by keeping my eye keenly on the road, and my paws pointing the way. You never know when I'm going to have to leap to action and take over the driving.

This is where we camped, near the lake. I had my very own special camping table. Yes, it's true. The keen-eyed among you may have noticed this is in fact my ramp for getting in the back of the car. Apparently, it weighs quite a lot, and took up some of the luggage space Mum and Dad had reserved for (in my opinion), frivolous and unnecessary items. A second cooler for wine and beer, for example - see what I mean? Who needs that? Anyway, it meant it had to serve double duty.

I could have run for miles on the mountain. This is the place with the biggest meadow in the world where we went last year. You can't even see how big it is in this picture. I think it would take me a whole day to run from one end to the other, but I didn't get a chance to find out. Mum insisted on keeping me close by, because we saw a bear on one of our trips up the mountain road. I've never seen a bear, but I smell them a lot when we're up there.

Although there are lots of lakes where we go camping, no one is allowed to swim in them. They're for fishing only. I love to fish, so it seems a bit unfair. To make up for not getting any water time, on the way home, we spent a whole day at the creek with the blue/green water. I swam and swam, and fished and fished, and finally got so tired, I had to find a shady spot on the beach to recover.

Now, that's what I call a vacation!

Crawdad Fishing, Ruby Style

It's been an exhausting week. I've spent hours at the creek, fishing for crawdads.

And do you know how many I've caught?

One.

Almost.

It jumped out at me and I almost caught it in my mouth!

There's a fine art to this crawdad fishing lark. Mum has captured some of my best techniques on this video she made.

The fun's all in the hunt, anyway, and boy, did I have fun!