Lake Tahoe

We left somewhat later than I'd wanted.  Sometime around 12:30, then we stopped at a bunch of places before actually hitting the road. Conker wasn't fond of the car ride, as usual, but managed to sleep most of the way.
We got to our campsite around 9:30, took forever to set up and talked with the relatives.

The next day we did a lot of nothing then went to the lake.  Conker wasn't allowed on the beach but I found a small creek and let him play around in it since it was pretty warm that day.  I walked Conker around a lot while other people swam in the lake.
The lake itself was very pretty but I forgot to take a picture of it.

That afternoon... I can't really remember what we did but talking with the relatives, as long as they stayed away from religion, politics and conspiracy theories was good.

 Conker's favorite activity around the camp was walking down to the creek.  One day my cousin and I went creek sploring with Conker and while walking on some old logs, Conker tried to step onto some floating bark that he thought was solid. 
He did that about six times before I was able to get him away from it and farther down the creek.




The next two days were exiting for Conker.  My siblings and cousin went frisbee golfing and took Conker along.  He really wanted to chase the frisbies so I let him in the wide open areas.  He was good about going after mine instead of the others and dropped it if I told him to when he picked it up.

I ended up finding a dog store and bought Conker a bunch of Zuke's Z-Ridge things since nobody in my town sells them.  They had two new flavors and Conker much prefers the apple over the cranberry.

The next day's exciting part happened in the evening right after dinner.  Conker had been tied to the tree right beside our trailer but I put him inside since he didn't spazz out when I went to the other campsite right across the road if he were in there. 
Anyways, I was sitting beside the fire talking with some lady I'm not related to when I realized that the loud bark-like baying was coming from my campsite.  I looked over and saw something brown behind my great Aunt's car.  Someone's jacket on a chair I suspected. 

Then it moved.

It was a freakin bear.  A hugeass bear, so big that it was definitely over four feet tall on all fours.  And this hugeass bear was looking through the screen door at Conker who was going nuts barking his head off at it.  That bear was only a couple inches away from the trailer and was most likely interested in the chicken smell eminating from inside.
But some loud pesky thing was in the way, and I imagine Conker saved us a couple thousand dollars in damages and fines simply by being present.

I alerted everyone in the campsite that:  "It's going to eat my dog!  That frickin huge bear is going to eat my dog!"  I wasn't aware I said that but anyways...
All the men in the campground went charging across the road but stopped when the curious bear who had picked up some sort of cake dish that Mom forgot to toss in the bear-proof trash containers, stood his forepaws up on our flimsy table.  He was now about seven feet tall and that made everyone rethink their decision of charging said bear.

Then, thankfully, somebody found their keys and remotely set off the alarm on their truck the next campsite over and that startled the bear enough to start heading back to the forest.  All the guys re-charged and made a whole bunch of noise until the bear who had slammed into one of the poles of our tarp-thing and lost his cakepan ran off.  You could hear the other campers as he made the rounds banging on things and yelling until it got dark and I guess he moseyed off.

He is supposedly a well-known bear to the residents.

Conker was able to relax somewhat the next day.  I was going to go hiking with my sisters and a boyfriend of one of them but I was told that the trail was in a California State Park and dogs aren't allowed on the trails in those.  So I didn't bother getting up when they did early in the morning.  I didn't get curious as to if the trail actually was dog-friendly until after they'd left.  I pulled out my list of trails that allowed dogs and found out that the trail they went on did allow dogs.  I was ticked at myself for not checking sooner.

I did find a small dog park that Conker relaxed at while everyone else went mini-golfing.  It was probably only about 1/4th the size of GP's dog park but Conker still had fun running around after two resident dogs left. 



All in all the trip was fun, but activities with Conker were greatly lacking.  I was bummed out that the relatives weren't really open to us doing what we wanted during "scheduled" group activities that were often of no interest to any of my siblings or cousin.  This was also the first time beer was present at the Lake Tahoe gathering thing and thankfully nobody pestered us about it.
I learned a few funny things about my Dad that I didn't know so that was neat.

As per tradition we took a huge group photo which I will not be sharing and Conker was invited to be a part of.  Everyone really liked him and believe him to be a "calm" dog.  Not really, he was just in a completely new environment and had met about 12 new people in one day so it was a bit overwhelming for him.  He did end up warming up to a couple of them but didn't like the two young and rather spoiled fat kids (who I'm thankfully not related to) who kept pestering him to be pet.

The ride home was very uneventful.  Conker had phases of being nervous and panting then sleeping, like the ride out.  He did at one point crawl up into my younger brother's lap who had wanted to hold Conker on both rides and that made him happy.


The Girls were super happy to see me when I walked in through the back door. Sasha was so happy that she was whining, it was kinda sad but cute at the same time.  She's also had some de-progress pertaining to her diet and weight loss that I will write about later.