We had a lot of little adventures yesterday. It started out a lot like last weekend, with my family heading down into the San Rafael Swell with my sister and her family following us. Before we got to Cleveland, Mark pulled their Bronco over because there was a noise and vibration coming from the rear-end. The lug nuts had all come loose, and two of the bolts actually broke clean off. Mark tightened the remaining three lug nuts, and they turned around and headed back for Price while I followed. About a mile after that, I saw another lug nut break off and bounce down the road, and they pulled over again. I ended up driving Mark back to Price to get their van, then we returned and he picked up the rest of his family and we continued on our drive down into the Swell, though almost two hours later than we’d planned.

It was pretty uneventful for most of the day after that. Our first stop was a geocache near some pictographs and a really cool fossilized dinosaur skeleton near Buckhorn Wash. After finding several more geocaches south of the San Rafael bridge, we drove back north and stopped at Hambrick Bottom to eat lunch (well, more like dinner), find a cache and some more pictographs, and have an Easter egg hunt for the kids. While climbing back up the the vehicles after finding the cache, Michael found a baby rattlesnake that was coiled up on the rocks–he came within an inch of it, but it didn’t strike at him.

We let the kids play at Hamburger Rocks for a while after that. It was actually nice to wind down there for a bit while the kids played, because up until that point we’d either been driving or hiking the entire time. After Hamburger Rocks, we had one last cache to find before we headed home. On our way there, we saw a dog wandering around on the side of the road. We were about 10 miles from the nearest pavement, but there were a lot of people in the Swell for Easter, so it could have came from anywhere. Nobody else was around though, and we stopped to check it out. The dog ran right up to the truck and Traci opened the door, and the dog was pretty friendly–she wanted in. We debated what to do for several minutes, but after a few vehicles drove by doing 50+ MPH on the gravel road, we decided to take her with us before she got ran over. She was pretty thirsty and drank a lot of water at first, and we fed her some bread wrapped around a piece of lunch meat, which she scarfed down. During the drive and hike to the next cache, we realized that she is a very well-behaved dog and tolerated the kids nicely. During the drive home, she alternated between sitting on Traci’s lap and curling up in the back seat between Michael and Bradley.

Since then, things have been very different at our house. We don’t know what to call her, so we just say, “Hey dog” or “Hey puppy!” She’s a Brittany Spaniel, and she’s not really a puppy, but she’s not too old either. I plan on calling the animal shelters for both Carbon and Emery counties, and putting an ad in the newspaper tomorrow morning to try and find her owner. We’re still not sure what we’ll do if we can’t find her owner. I wouldn’t mind having a dog, but just having her for a day makes me realize how much work and expense will be involved.