Hamster Dancin' Around the World

CYPHER!!!

Every pic a masterpiece, and also touching.

Major flics, terrific.

Aww! Thank you, osso! You'll like the rest of the pics too, we had such gorgeous weather for our outings; it shows your old stomping grounds off to good advantage.

I feel bad that I'm posting pics so sporadically-- it's just I'm in the middle of doing all this stuff for grad school, taking my GRE and getting my applications in and writing statements of purpose and blahblahblah... Penny's being such good company though, sitting here cheering me on! I really will get some more pics posted soon...

Soz, when do you want me to get her in the mail to you? (I feel so bad talking about her like a common package! Make that, when shall I, um, book her passage?)

Home for xmas if that was possible.

I want Penny home, I want Penny home for christmas
I want Penny home, I want Penny home on christmas day ... ...

Just close your eyes, click your heels together 3 times and say:

I want Penny home on christmas day

No wait... thats for Kansas.

Looks like Penny is continuing to have a great time. Love all the pictures cyphercat took of her. They are way cool :-D

Hiya, yeah, if she could be here by Christmas that'd be great but no pressure/rush. If it works out, great, but if it's a hassle, after Christmas is fine too.

Still going for that whole laid-back, no-rush kind of adventure. :-)

And I'm happy for you doing the whole grad school thing, Cypher, even though it's a big batch of work right about now.

Looking forward to Stomping Ground with Penny photos

Well, Penny is off home! She should be on her way by now, we sent her off yesterday-- I miss her already!

I'll keep posting our pictures from where Penny left off.


This is Penny posing in front of one of the first really cool trees we came to. (sorry for the blurriness! I'm terrible at keeping my hands steady while I take photos.) It's been struck by lightning and is all hollowed out for a really long way up the trunk. I'm always amazed that these huge trees can grow perfectly well even with the middle all burned out of them! The second pic is looking upward to give you some idea of how high up the burned out part goes...







Penny liked all the neat lumpy-bumpy parts on this one and wanted a pic of her perched on it...





Penny and me!






This is one of my favorite parts on the trail; it's another hollowed-out tree, but from the trailside you just see this little crevice with a kind of path going down into it. Here's Penny making her way down into the mysterious little cavern...






I walked around the other side so that I could get a pic of her coming down the path from inside the tree-cavern....







Here's a view where you can see how dark and enclosed it is inside the tree...









Penny just couldn't rest until she got to climb around in all the little hidey-holes and crannies all over the walls!







Back out in the sunshine!

Wowwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!

Schniff...

This is that same tree from the outside-- it's dead, but it's so surrounded by other things growing on it that you wouldn't even realize it was dead unless you look way up above your head!












This is what Penny was pointing at in the last one...waaay at the top of the dead tree, there's a little plant growing on it!








Here's Mr C and Penny










One of my favorite things about walking in the Redwoods is the way the sun slants through the trees-- there are always the most beautiful beams of sunlight, and foliage just glowing with diffused sunlight...








This was a weird one... It's still a redwood, but for some reason all of its foliage was growing right up against the trunk so that it was shaped like a big green fluffy cylinder-- didn't even look like a redwood until we got close enough to see the needles.







Penny noticed this spot just before we left and had to get a picture here posing with this teeny little sprout of a tree...





She liked it because was like a whole little landscape on the trunk of a fallen redwood! It's really cool how much stuff grows on them after they fall.

The next day we had sunshine again, so we headed to the ocean.


Here's Penny first look at the water! She was pretty excited. It was really a lovely clear day...





...Penny looked so adorable in this spot that I took a whole bunch of her here!










Next we went to walk down to the beach. The path splits and there are two ways you can head down. Penny considers this way...








...but decides we're too lazy to face the climb back; those stairs are steep!




A view on our way down...








And here we are down at the bottom of the path, where normally it's a beach. But we had come at high tide! So there was pretty much no beach, just rocks and swirling water.







It looked rather forbidding.








Being the Nervous Nellie that I am, always envisioning being caught by the incoming tide and a freak wave dashing me to my death among the craggy rocks, this was as close as we got to the water -- well, I know it doesn't look scary, but some of the waves were coming right up to the rock we were on, and, and, it was all churning around and stuff! well, it was!






Here's a view as we're leaving-- I think Penny looks a little annoyed here because I'm making her leave without getting in the water...








And I just had to get a picture of this, just because even though I've lived here over a year, I'm still in shock over how green everything is in the winter...

That's everything I have uploaded from the camera right now, I'm going to do the rest tomorrow. Pics of Penny helping me decorate for Christmas!

Amazing pictures Cypher!!!


<waving to Cyphercat and Penny>

Great photos! And Penny really gets to see a lot.

Oh how fantastic! I can't wait to link these photos for Penny's friends in Toronto.

Those cavern-y photos were wonderful - and and and EVERYTHING!

Thanks for the terrific photos cyphercat. A beautiful change of scenery from what I'm seeing outside my window right now

I'm glad everyone is enjoying the photos!

This is my last batch.... here's Penny on the porch with my petunia that's still chugging along in December! (I'm sorry, I just can't resist teasing everybody that's in the middle of real winter... )







I asked Penny if she would mind helping me put up my Christmas decorations before she left, and we had a lot of fun with it-- she was very helpful! Here she is climbing up with a garland to hang...







And here she is climbing up onto the garlands over the window to decorate it-- she did all the high work for me since I hate climbing up on chairs!






Adding ornaments to the garlands (I don't have room for a Christmas tree, so I just hang all my ornaments on swags of "greenery")....





Penny and Sticky consulting on the decorating (Sticky *never* missed a chance to sniff Penny)....








Adding the finishing touches...








...and all finished up, but a bit unsure of how to reach the plug....










And showing off the finished work!








I also introduced Penny to Mo the guinea pig before she left -- I think Penny really enjoyed having a nice healthy bunch of rodent food after all the people food she's been having on her travels! She and Mo seemed right at home with each other, too.














And, of course, Sticky had to see what was going on with the order Rodentia! (hee, I just noticed Rufus in the background looking all serious )

Oops, I forgot two-- I had Penny decorate my teeny little tree... At first she had a smidge of trouble with the decorations:






....but she got it all sorted out after a few minutes!