Before we had our CRV we borrowed one from some friends to drive up into the mountains. Kylie rode in the backseat of course, and she made herself at home on a child’s car seat. She loved it!! She loved the elevation, inside and out of the car, and especially in the car seat where she could get even higher and look down into the other cars – or at least be eye level with them. In Colorado almost everybody drives an suv and apparently she didn’t like the view from the little honda hatchback so much.
It was then that we decided to buy a CRV for ourselves – well, more accurately for Kylie! But we told her that we absolutely refused to put a child safety seat in the back! Fortunately we found something better.. a booster seat! It was made specifically for dogs, it provided a comfortable raised seat, storage space under the seat, and you could even take it out of the car and unfold it to make a bed in the hotel room or wherever. It’s pretty cool – and it was possibly Kylie’s favorite place to be!
Her favorite place to snooze during a long road trip..
Her favorite place to stand guard, or rather sit and guard her CRV…
Definitely the best place to look down at people in tiny little cars..
and no question, the best place ever to just cruise and be cool!
Once in New Jersey we decided to go on a trek to Amish Country because, well, why not. It’s not a long drive -unless you make a wrong turn and end up in Delaware (oops!), good thing we were pretty much always in it for the journey, not the destination!
So when we finally got there, we were tooling around seeing what there is to see, but Kylie was really not happy with what there was to see. There were two things that got Kylie really riled up when she was riding in the car, one was pedestrians. You see Kylie loved going places in the car, it didn’t matter where she just liked to go! So she couldn’t understand why everybody else didn’t ride around in the car too, it seemed suspicious to her that anybody would choose to be on foot, or riding in a horse drawn buggy for that matter. Which brings us to the other thing… horses (and cows too). And what do they have more than anything of in Amish Country? Pedestrians & horses!
She was barking her head off the whole time!
Then we had stopped to do some shopping, and touristy type touring and we were at a stand where they were selling homemade candies and goodies and root beer of all things. And there was a cute little Amish girl working there, maybe ten years old, and of course she was instantly captivated by Kylie. So she came out and knelt down to say hello and Kylie who was hot & tired and already on high alert because of all the horses and such started barking like crazy at the little girl in black & white and scared her silly! Poor little girl didn’t know what hit her, we felt terrible so we bought a big jug of root beer and didn’t let Kylie have any even though root beer is her favorite.
That was, needless to say, our only trip to Amish Country!
This time of year our favorite family outing was a trip to Breckenridge for the International Snow Sculpting Competition. Kylie loves snow, so the amazing sculptures were just a bonus!
There were always plenty of other dogs around but Kylie, especially in her backpack always attracted attention. One of the things we miss the most is being around little miss congeniality and the life of the party! But really, we just miss everything about her.
One of Kylie’s favorite things was a road trip! We went all over.. From New Jersey we went all up and down the east coast, and from Colorado we would pick a direction and just go. The destination was not nearly as important or exciting as the journey.
That was especially true on a spontaneous jaunt to Roswell, New Mexico where Kylie made some interesting new friends.
Anyway, as you can imagine the drive got very boring, miles and miles and miles of nothing (actually you can’t imagine). Kylie doesn’t do well with boring.. fortunately her imagination kept her from staying that way. She invented a game.
She was riding in the back of a little Honda Civic hatchback and she started putting her paws up on the back of the driver’s seat so she could see out the front, and she would wait… Then when there would be an oncoming vehicle, she would get ready – ready to attack! Growling, and posturing, she would get louder as they got closer, then as they sped past she barked visciously and pounced against the backseat window and “chase” them all the way to the back of the car, feverishly jumping on and climbing over the bags and pillows and what not in the hatchback, and barking at them behind us for awhile! She went nuts!! Then she’d “reset” and come back to the front wagging her tail, waiting for the next one.
This went on for hours, although she would skip some cars for no apparent reason. Well, no apparent reason to us anyway, clearly the game had rules we did not understand. We tried joining in a couple times but mostly we didn’t do it right and she would look at is like we were the crazy ones!
It certainly made a boring drive entertaining, just like Kylie made every boring day entertaining!
On another awesome autumn adventure with Kylie we drove all over New England. We went to upstate New York, and all the way up to Bar Harbor in Maine, it was really beautiful. And along the way we stopped at Dog Mountain, Vermont.
It’s home of artist Stephen Huneck’s gallery, and a dog chapel where we got Kylie’s photo with this big dog sculpture. Everybody loves this snapshot
Our first visit to Royal Gorge bridge in CO, world’s highest suspension bridge – and yes, Kylie walked across it, which allowed us to get this awesome photo!
In case you were wondering where Kylie encountered such a tall tortoise, we were at the very famous Colorado Gator Farm. Actually its not so much famous, as practically unheard of.
We were there because our friend and former neighbor, Kelly, was visiting us from Jersey. (Kelly used to call Kylie her “little meatloaf”) She had requested that instead of the normal touristy stuff during her visit to Colorado, we do ABnormal touristy stuff – you know, roadside oddities and the like. Well that’s right up our alley so went to among other odd things along the roadside, The Colorado Gator Farm. It was quite a drive and quite a surprise when we got there to see a sign on the door that said “Dogs Allowed.” (And this was one of the few places we weren’t going to complain about not being able to take her.)
Kylie very much enjoyed the Gator Farm & Reptile Park..
Yes that’s a real (real big) alligator just on the other side of the fence, and Yes, she’s barking at him!!
We called her gator bait for the rest of the week!
Just noticed that the picture featured on bing.com today was of Carhenge.
Guess who’s been there?!..
It was one of our spontaneous road trips. And while we had a good time, we wouldn’t necessarily recommend driving several hundreds of miles out of your way to see it! (And since it’s in Nebraska, it is pretty much out of the way no matter where you’re going.) Surprisingly it’s really not as exciting as you might think.
Luckily for Kylie, it was all about the journey – always!
One of our favorite things to do in the summer as a family was to go to the drive in movie. We would throw a futon mattress and a bunch of pillows and blankets in the back of the crv pack up a bunch of snacks and head out nearly every weekend.
Kylie loved it, though she was more interested in the stray cats that roamed the drive in, than whatever movie was on the screen, so for her it was always an action adventure! She would growl, in that low, threatening, jack russell terrorist growl when the cats (or sometimes kids) would come near. And if they kept coming she’d break into a bark and then get shushed, but it was so funny! Then she would remain vigil as long as she could until she got too sleepy. Sometimes we’d explore during intermission (sometimes even during the film), and you can imagine how intriguing the smells were.
She also especially enjoyed the “movie snacks” because we also packed treats for her! And of course she also got to share the popcorn, or nachos, or whatever we got when we would visit the snack bar.
It didn’t matter to us what movies were playing either, in fact we watched some pretty crappy movies. It was just the most fun form of affordable family entertainment, where we could all just be together. It was about the experience! And like everything else we did together, it was always fun for us just to watch Kylie experience things.
And it often was quite an adventure, between cats, and bats (yes, bats), swarms of moths, smokers, and noisy teenagers, cold, hot, rain or shine – well not shine that really wouldn’t work – we always had fun, because we were together.
We miss you Kylie, and miss taking you to the drive in.
Alternate title for this post “Kylie Hates Golden Retrievers”…
On one of our first big road trips after moving to the mainland, all three of us went on a trip to Boston! It was the first time any of us had been there so it was very exciting. Especially for Kylie with all the new sights and smells and all the Golden Retrievers!
It was presumably the first time Kylie had ever seen a Golden Retriever, or as we call them, the Toyota Camry of dogs, and for some reason she developed an instant dislike of the breed.
We were in a nice little artsy shop called Industry, where there was a big friendly retriever lounging, minding her own business. (She was literally “minding her own business,” in fact but we’ll get back to that.) The next thing we knew Kylie was like a badger on a leash trying to kick her golden ass! We called her off and scolded her and apologized profusely to the shopkeeper, who checked the victim of the attack out and saw that there wasn’t a scratch on her.
Then they explained to us that “Industry” was the Golden’s name and it was HER store – their tag line was “She’s a bitch to work for!” Yikes! Good job, Kylie! So we made a nice sized purchase before leaving the store including the fancy ceramic treat jar that was prominently located on her cookie bar for years to come.
Later that afternoon we were walking down the sidewalk approaching our car and a guy came around the corner with a big Golden Retriever walking beside him – not on a leash. We had opened the car door for Kylie to hop in, but just about then the retriever decided to say hello to her. Instead of returning the friendly greeting she lunged at him like a snarling psycho! We yelled again and scolded her again, and apologized again. The guy said don’t worry about it and continued on his way. Then when we got in the car, he approached us and started us to inform us that his dog was actually bleeding. We got out and took a look at the dog, who upon closer inspection we realized was a little on the elderly side and had one of his front legs all bandaged up. The blood was coming from a tiny little hole Kylie, aka Jaws, had made in the very soft part of his big nose. Yikes! Good job, Kylie!
So we felt pretty bad, but we did point out to the guy once we verified his dog was not seriously injured, that if he had been on a leash the altercation would have been avoided. And that was pretty much the end of that, and it was pretty much the end of Kylie’s visit to Boston. In fact we told her she was 86′d from the whole city – that’s right she was banned from Bean Town!
Over the next few years the two girls made a few trips to Boston for hockey games and/or shopping but Miss Kylie stayed home with a sitter.
Eventually the ban was lifted and Kylie did make a triumphant return to Boston – and she managed to behave herself. She never, however, got over her issues with Golden Retrievers.
