A Cold Adventure

I have a cold. It's not an awful, horrible cold. It probably doesn't even count as a bad cold, but it does make breathing a bit difficult, especially since this is our first foray into hilly territory since Denver a month or so ago.
The first mate, knowing that I have a cold, approached me after dinner to see if I was feeling better, better enough to go on an adventure. "Just a quarter mile there and a quarter mile back," he said, surely knowing that I could not refuse to explore such a short distance. If it had been the first a.b., I would have demanded to know what he wanted me to see. He would have said something or other and I would have been satisfied that whatever it was could at least wait until morning. If it had been the second a.b., I wouldn't have had to go, because he would have described it so thoroughly that the surprise would be not so surprising and, again, it could have waited until morning. The first mate, though, being very well verses in "rules for getting the captain to go where you want her to" simply handed me my shoes and picked up the camera. "It's not far," he repeated.

Not far.
Just a quarter mile there and a quarter mile back. And the dog needed a walk anyway. So I put on my shoes and leashed up my dog, and we all headed out into what is known as The Little Sahara.




Despite the name of the area, the walk started out fairly pleasantly. There were sunflowers, my favorite.










And then we hit the trail. Sand. Hills. Thorns. Not far. . . as the crow flies.

This is an accurate depiction of the trail, it actually went straight up like that. 

This is a picture of the first mate assuring me that it is not far.
Lies. All of it.








Still, the dog really did need a walk, and the Commodore always says that fresh air is really good for people who have colds.

This is a picture of the cactus that we passed, which the second a.b. informed me it would be unwise to sit on. I'm not sure why I would be tempted to sit on a cactus in the first place, but he seemed to think it was important that I knew not to sit there.

And then we got there. The sight I simply had to see was a rickety old overlook stand at the top of a sand dune. Was it worth climbing sandy, vertical hills to get to a lookout tower where one can see over the Little Sahara? Was it worth staggering breathlessly through sand spur patches and facing a dangerous encounter with a cactus? I really don't know, but by that point I was already there, so the only thing to do was take a few more pictures.

Two people out of four smiling is actually only half bad. 

And then head home.