4300 Miles & 10 alpacas later

Just home last Saturday from our trip East to Kentucky for the National Alpaca Conference, with stops in GA, VA, and OH to pick up animals. We snuck in a wonderfully restful 2-day visit to my Aunt Cordie & Uncle Charlie's place in Asheville, NC. We learned a lot at the conference, and met a lot of people. Definately worth the trip. At the Auction we ended up buying three animals, including one Suri alpaca (Another kind of alpaca that has ringlets like dreadlocks in their fleece).
Meanwhile back in Idaho, where Token was enjoying her maternity leave, we had a new baby boy born, Fletcher (named after the town my Aunt & Uncle's address is).

We finished up the trip (be thinking $100 of gas every 3 hours for a week and a half) with a 28-hour marathon drive, with 10 alpacas in the trailer, straight through from Ohio in 3 hour shifts. Which actually, while we were dreading it, it was actually just fine.

Mike dropped me off in Denver to pick up Valeria, a foreign-exchange student that lived with my family for a year in high school. Meanwhile he went home and made dinner for us. We spent the night, and morning, experiencing the ranch, then she and I went to Albuquerque to visit with my parents. Memorial day found us by the pool with friends of the family Valeria had not seen in the 27 years since she lived at our house. Then Tuesday she and I went up to visit Los Alamos, peek in the windows of the house, wander around the high school and look up a couple of friends we could find. This morning I dropped her off at the airport and she left again for Brazil. She is really just like a sister to me and the visit was absolutley perfect. So sad to see her off again!Saturday the girls come home for the summer. We are having a pool party for their friends before heading up to Colorado. Mike is already home and making great progress on the daunting projects that await at the Aardwolf Ranch.... Life is good.