How Much is a Scone?

(Olympia, WA) Where weren’t we today! Early this morning we had to drop Slugger off at the vet. Over the weekend we noticed a custy scab type thing on his lower chest. It was very red all around and was starting to bleed. I had actually noticed the black thing on his chest a couple months ago but Mike said it just looked like a scab. I thought that was a bit odd as I’d never seen a sore. Then this past weekend when we noticed redness surrounding it and the bleeding - we knew this was no scab. We called the vet on Saturday and told them we thought we’d need a biopsy done. They said they’d take care of him on Monday.

So after dropping Slugger at the vet this morning; Mike, Wazzu, and I headed for the Puyallup Fair.

Let me explain to you about the most expensive scones ever.

We had originally planned to head south directly from Vanouver as we have to be in Bend on Tuesday. But we suddenly realized that if we did that we’d miss the Puyallup Fair – and of course that meant missing scones!!

So we drove all the way from Vancouver to Rochester in the RV – gas: $47
Then we drove from Rochester to Puyallup (roundtrip) – gas: $16
Parking: $10
Tickets: $20
Scones: (bakers dozen plus two!!) $13
Rochester to Vancouver (back to where we started from) RV gas: $47

My legs only held up for an hour fifteen minutes so we didn’t get to see much at all. So basically the grand totally for fifteen scones was $153.00. Was it worth it – you bet! I just really wish we could have stayed a few hours and actually seen more of the Fair. I felt so bad as Mike really wanted to see more and no matter how much I encouraged him to go see more while I waited, he wouldn’t hear of it. He said it wouldn’t be any fun by himself. I so understand. What I just don’t understand is how someone (me!) that took such good care of their body could have it go so haywire. I was very active, exercised daily, ate extremely well, didn’t do drugs, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, - my only bad habit was an occasional bite of chocolate (okay, sometimes more than a bite). Then I see all these people that never exercise, eat lots of junk food everyday, do drugs daily, chain-smoke, and drink everyday yet they can still go out and do anything they want. Boy it sure is true: Life isn’t fair. Oops, guess I got side tracked.

Anyway, the time we were at the Fair we had a good time. We parked near the main entrance – the Blue Gate. For many years the gates were colors. Then they changed to animals for a few years. Now they’re back to colors. I don’t really know what difference it makes but since blue is my favorite color we parked there. Well I like to think that anyway. In actuality, the Blue Gate is the first one you come to when you get off the freeway!



Of course the very first thing we did was to get a couple scones! As we were walking to the grandstand (to the original scone store) we saw the Puyallup Fair Pig. Unfortunately my hands were all sticky as I was still eating my scone so I couldn’t get a very good picture….and now my camera is all sticky! (The pig is starting to bend over to say hi to a kid.)



Since we knew we couldn’t be there very long we’d have to do our most favorite things first. Mine was done – scones, lots of them! Next was Mike’s turn – Wilcox Ice Cream Cones. He loved it! I was still too full from my scone to have any ice cream – too bad as that is always really good!

That meant it was time to do Wazzu’s favorite thing at the fair – the sheep barns! (Although I must say she certainly enjoyed the scones and the ice cream.) But actually we all enjoyed the sheep barns. There are so many very different kinds of sheep! Darn, I should have kept track of the names of them – but I was having so much fun watching Wazzu have fun that I didn’t think of that at the time.

I could relate to this sheep - look at all that curly hair. But what I want to know is how she keeps her bangs down in the front.



And these bangs are even longer! (I don't think I'd want bangs that long!)



I didn't know some of them had four horns! Hopefully, Wazzu is careful around these guys.



Wazzu was so good. She looked at the sheep but she never stared at them. But let me tell you the sheep were all very curious about Wazzu. Every one of them looked up as we approached. I guess since the sheep were all together Wazzu didn’t feel the need to herd them at all.

Like all the other sheep, this guy perked right up when Wazzu came by.



As you can see, Wazzu and the sheep are very interested in each other. I'm just clutching tight to my scones!



We also walked through a couple of the cow barns and while Wazzu thought this was okay she really wanted to go through the sheep barns again. But unfortunately there was no time for that.

Wazzu sure looked small next to those huge cows! This cow wasn't all that big but I really liked her markings.



They must have been having a cow show (or whatever they call them) that day as many of the cows were getting all groomed.



We humans sure are silly – grooming a cow!! I always thought it was pretty silly all the grooming people do for some of the dogs. I mean, we saw some people recently spending a couple hours grooming whippets and pit bulls! They have such short hair to begin with – and of course are so adorable just the way there are. Oops. Off track once again!

Mike is always saying that Slugger looks lik a hippopatamus. But as soon as we saw this cow we immediately thought of Slugger. He will always sleep like this if he gets the chance!



So now we finally make it to an exhibition hall. Wazzu and I just walked the aisles (not too busy yet as we arrived at the Fair just before opening time) while Mike stopped to look at various things. He found a couple things he couldn’t live without.

We ended up seeing only about 1/100 of the Fair. Hopefully next year we’ll be able to really “Do The Puyallup.”

Time to go rescue Slugger from the vet office. Good news, bad news. The good news is the vet thinks that most likely the growth/spot is benign. But says he definitely needs a biopsy to be sure. Bad news – she doesn’t have time to do that today. Arg – we thought we had this all arranged in advance. Now we’re going to be on the road daily so we’re not sure when we’ll be able to get it taken care of. But the vet thinks we’ll be pretty safe to wait a little bit. Sure hope she’s right……but really wish they could have taken care of it today.

It was a record setting temperature today so we then had to hurry back to Rochester to rescue the other two dogs from the RV. Then we drove back up to Olympia to take care of a few things.

While there we saw the progress they’d made with the logs from the ship that I showed you a few days ago. I really don’t know much about all these logs but it is interesting to watch them get moved around.



This next picture I just included as it answers a question we were discussing the other day. The logs are on the large ship in bundles. We were wondering how they got them out of the bundles to store them in a single layer in the boom. But here you can see the logs actually are still in bundles in the log boom.



I was able to capture a quick shot of this deer as it was trying to leave my parent’s yard. It had been much closer and out in the open but Slugger had to bark at it from the deck before I could get a shot of it there – shucks.



Quite the whirlwind of a day to be sure.

Debbie
9/10/07