Sheesh, we can take a hint...

...we aren't totally dense. Sometimes (like today) when the trees are talking to you, it's time to listen.

We live at the edge of The Bighorn National Forest. About 20 years ago a guy from Ohio bought and started to subdivide some acreage adjacent to it. I don't know all of the gritty details but I do know that roads were slashed through the trees before Mr. Ohio was arrested on something totally unrelated, and the vacant property was confiscated by the IRS. It's kind of remote and deserted so it's a perfect place to walk Stanley. Anyways, a couple of weeks ago someone told us that all of that land was still in the government's possession and stuck in legal limbo. Up until then we weren't sure what was going on with it. But since no one was around and it was essentially government land we decided there would be no harm in hitting some of the back trails where we stumbled upon an old abandoned lodge. Unfortunately I'd forgotten my camera and when we went back a couple of days later to take pics we found that the U.S. Marshal's service had posted signs everywhere threatening arrest to trespassers. Now how weird is that??? 20 years of remote land lying vacant and 2 days after we hike there the government posts notices to keep out.

Well, we're not so paranoid as to think that it really had anything to do with us. I mean, the nearest Marshal Service Office is two and a half hours away for pete's sake. So we laughed it off as a coincidence and went back to walking the road. Then today, as Stanley was prancing out in front of us he stopped dead in his tracks. We stopped too, and although we couldn't see anything, we could hear growling. And if that isn't bad enough, at that very moment the wind eerily delivered an overwhelming stench of death our way. It seems that either we'd managed to interrupt some animal's dinner or something strange is going on in those woods. And while we're pretty comfortable with mysterious signs appearing out of nowhere, we don't really want any part of pissing off large carnivores. So I'm thinking we'll walk someplace else tomorrow. The trees are definitely trying to tell us something!