We drove to Holly, CO to prairie dog hunt on Mark's cousin's property. We set up camp outside of two abandoned buildings while Miah stomped around and got dirt in her shoes.

I snapped a quick shot of the bright sunset before helping assemble the tent and arranging the beds. A couple of hours later we had our chairs facing the same direction in the dark night to watch God's "sparkles." The lightning streaked like chicken feet over the land until it reached us.

As Mark pointed out, Chris probably couldn't have shot the barbed wire fence if he had tried, but he managed to, twice. Mark was able to fix it by using ratchet tie downs.

See the barrel sticking out of the window? Mark and Chris had to move inside the building because the wind was so strong. It made me imagine Indians were coming over the horizon.

After a full day of hunting--we probably shot about 50--another storm descended. I took this photo a few minutes before the the storm pulled our tent down and drowned our belongings. At this point we still thought that we could stay the night. Then the wind, rain, and hail changed all of that. Mark was shouting orders over the wind at Chris and I as we tried to put the wind down before all of our tent poles broke. When the rain hit, Miah became too frightened, so I had to take her inside one of the houses which we're much more dry. I was instructed to keep the rain fly from catching a draught out the window, so I stood near it while comforting Miah. Then the fly caught a gust and started dancing around the ceiling like a gray ghost. I pulled it down just as the hail started to pelt Mark and Chris outside. If it hadn't been painful, it would have been funny to see them wince and fidget under the quarter sized hail. They both walked away with welts. About this time I realized how wet the rifles in the other room were getting, so I placed Miah, whimpering, on top of the rain fly in the most protected part of the building and started to rescue our things from the other room. By the end my shirt was about as wet as anybody else's. Mark and Chris couldn't pick the tent up out of the water because it was full of bedding, clothes, and gun cases. We had to abandon the tent to the storm, and pack everything muddy and drenched. Around 9PM we headed to Lamar to find a hotel where we could shower and change clothes at the very least.

The first hotel we reached only rented one bed rooms, so we stuck to the plan of showering, eating, and driving home. The woman behind the counter looked at me dumbly when I said I'd like to rent a room, and if I could, for just a couple of hours. She smiled, said she was booked, shrugged her shoulders, and dialed a cell phone. What was going on? Without explanation she nodded and handed me her phone. So I talked to the manager about renting a room for two hours. Apparently there were two rooms open after all, and yes I could rent one for a couple of hours. The manager told me to fill out a reservation form since the woman in front of me didn't know how to. What kind of a crazy place was this? The woman on the phone hung up which freaked the front desk clerk who immediately called her boss again. I patiently filled out the reservation card while the lady fumbled to locate the number 1 1 9, but instead tried to give me keys to room 109. Then she ran my credit card for $0.50. I couldn't, in good conscience, let the mistake go unnoticed. I explained to the lady that she needed to run my card again for the difference. She insisted that she had run my card for a full $50.00 which was even further from the original price than the fifty cents. Since she insisted and my patience was gone, I left her to call her boss again. She knocked on our room door a few minutes later to tell me that she had made a mistake, and handed me the cell phone again. I told the boss that I had tried to correct the error, and that I would take care of it as we checked out. Mark and Chris danced around cock roaches and beetles and the center of the shower floor that was about to cave in. The front desk clerk paid us another visit to remind me that a mistake had been made. We finally piled back into the car, and I braced myself for the front desk.

I was handed the cell phone again, and told that she would run my card for the $50.00! I told the boss that was not what we had agreed to all of 60 minutes earlier, and that I would walk out with the fifty cent charge if that's how they did business. I was ushered back. The lady behind the counter stared at my card and the credit card machine for a full minute before sliding it. The long story short I had to come around the counter and process my own card. Shouldn't I get a discount for doing the clerk's job?

McDonald's, being the only restaurant open in Lamar at that dark hour, cooked some food for us, but had already closed down the credit card machine. We scrambled for cash among the three of us, and watched the golden arches get turned off as we turned back on the highway.