city in the country

i love it that you can go from (albeit small-townish but definitely not without culture) city to full on, outdoorsy, llamas-and-sheep country in just seconds here. there are no miles and miles of freeway through acres and acres of strip-mall suburb. (well, except for springfield, but that's only in one direction... but anyway...) last sunday matt and i got up, made breakfast, loaded otis in the car, and drive for no more than 20 minutes to get here:

(yes, i finally learned how to upload photos onto my blog. i know, a monkey could have figured it out, blah blah... :) ) this is at the base of spencer's butte, which is just south of eugene and an absolutely gorgeous hike. i was going to post some of the pictures that i took once we got to the top, but for some reason i can't make those ones upload--i think because i used the "panorama" feature on my camera and my computer doesn't know how to translate that, and i don't have a monkey around to help me figure it out--but take my word for it, it was breathtaking. the last quarter-mile or so is pretty much just climbing up rocks to get to the top. aside from the spectacular view, what impressed me was that otis is a) extremely agile and adept at scrambling up rocks, and kind of reminded me of gollum from lord of the rings and b) very tuned-in to his people, and could recognize that matt and i were not so agile and therefore was careful not to pull us up or down the rocks but instead waited patiently for whoever was walking him to find their footing before making the next scramble.