THE MOUNTAINS, Day 1

We spent most of our first full day in the mountains at a place called Donner Lake. The whole lake thing confused me a little at first. Water you can drink AND swim in - what a concept!? The water was cool and so clear I could see fishes swimming along the bottom. But the best part was that I didn't get knocked down by a single tsunami the entire time (I always get knocked over by waves at the ocean).

After a long day playing at the lake, we hiked to the top of a great big mountain and looked for a place to camp. My human lead us straight to a hidden spot that was soft and sandy and perfectly flat. Except for a few old pine trees, we were the tallest things for miles. I could look down on the entire world from our campsite. Of course brother Dutch wasn't happy about the whole tent thing, but I thought it was SO cool.

Until about midnight.

That's when the lightning started. I'd never seen lightning before and it was a little freaky, but seemed harmless enough. My human wasn't thrilled, but I was OK with it. Until the thunder showed up. Really really loud scary thunder. I've never heard anything make so much noise in my life. I was definitely not OK with the thunder.

I was scared. My human was kicking herself for pitching our a tent at the highest campsite on earth. Brother Dutch was sound asleep.... and then came the hail. THUMK THUMK THUMK against our tent, it was almost as loud as the scary thunder. It was all too much. I was ready to swear off camping and tents and mountains for good... when my human pulled out a cow ear for me to chew on. So I chewed.

Yum-my! I'd never tasted one of those before. Crispy on the outside, chewy underneath. Totally took my mind off, uh, that other stuff.