Trailer Life Stop #2: Walla Walla Internal Medicine Rotation

This place can pretty much be summed up by a conversation I had with a guy on a mountain bike while I was out walking the dogs.  He saw my Colorado flag hat and stopped to ask what part of Colorado I was from. I told him Denver, and asked where he was from.  When he answered “Durango,” I said “I love Durango!  But wait—why are you here instead of there? Durango is so much better!” He replied that his wife got a job here but they’re trying to maintain the house they still have near Mesa Verde. Then he turned the same question on me, and I explained about Mike’s 5-week rotation.  He then said it was a good thing we wouldn’t be here for winter, since it’s basically 30 degrees and damp every day with a constant weather inversion.

If you don’t know what a weather inversion is, it’s basically the visual manifestation of lung issues. The clouds and the air below the clouds switch places, and the air squashes the pollutant-heavy clouds down like a bully squeezing the lunch money out of Steve Urkel. Salt Lake City is famous for its nasty winter inversions:

Ew.

By the way, where I was walking the dogs is the only place within 20 miles where I can hike them off leash.  It’s called Bennington Lake, and it has the distinct air of being grudgingly afforded to Parks and Rec by the surrounding agricultural interests. AND it’s also a hunting area from October to January, so I have to put orange things on Paddington so she doesn’t get mistaken for a wolf and shot.

For the record, this is a wolf:

This is not:

Note the brindle fur, white feet, and curly tail.

So everybody can stop saying she looks like a wolf now.

The trails at Bennington meander around a medium-sized body of irrigation runoff water, and there are lots of charming signs around warning of the danger of “toxic algae,” which will apparently really fuck your shit up and that of your animals and children (though if you let your children go near that water, maybe you should get out of the gene pool anyway). So even when it’s hot out and the dogs could use a drink and a wallow, I keep them well away, and they are very sad.  The trails are open to bikes, but I think riding here would just be depressing because I’ve been spoiled by actual mountain biking. It’s also popular with equestrians, which means that although I have to carry my dogs’ poo around with me until I find a trash receptacle, I have to constantly sidestep enormous piles of horse crap on the trail. Thanks guys.

This is what the place looks like:

Ugh.

Its one redeeming quality is this cool Great Horned Owl that I spotted the other day. I shall call him Archibald.

So this is basically all we have for outdoor exploring around here unless we want to drive for over an hour.  This is clearly not a haven for adventurous souls like Boulder or Bozeman, and I would advise anyone who likes doing anything other than drinking wine to give it a miss.

We had originally bought the trailer with the hope that we could find nearby Forest Service land to drop it on for free in each rotation location, and then run electricity off the solar panels and generators.  On our second day here, we found out that W² is not that kind of place.  The closest we’d be able to manage was at least an hour out of town on roads with very sharp, tire-puncturing gravel, with no cell service.  That was simply not going to happen, so we admitted defeat and paid for a month in a spot at Four Seasons RV Resort.

The pros: 1.5 miles from Mike’s hospital

                   Fresh water

                   Electricity

                   Showers and laundry

                   Nearby grocery store

The cons: It’s a goddamn RV resort

Oh well. It’s only 5 weeks.

Hey, at least there’s a resident gang of turkeys! Stuffing. Let’s say a group of turkeys is a stuffing. So wrong it’s right.  Paddington and Ellie really really want to chase them, and I kind of want to see what would happen if I let them.  But I can’t help remembering the time Ellie chased a cat and got a claw scratch down the cornea for her trouble.  So…they will remain leashed.

Yes, I know there's a tortoise in the photo.  Look past it.

 I thought our trailer was decent-sized (in any case, it’s a major pain to get situated anywhere that’s not perfectly level) but it is downright tiny compared to the behemoths in this place.  Everyone’s got massive 5^th wheels with multiple pop-outs, and since this place has DirectTV, you can see their enormous TVs through their windows at all times of day and night. ‘Murica!

We’ve done no mountain biking here.  There isn’t any.

We did some wine tasting.  Woo.

I made a display rack for earrings out of bike spokes.  Yay.

I realize this post has probably been a major downer, but in less than a week we get to go back to Bozeman! It will be considerably colder, yes, but there will be so much more funtivities! Stay tuned!