Snowball Fight on the Continental Divide is a Prickly Experience!

From Mesa Verde we headed to the southwest to visit the Four Corners of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Check out www.hayleyadventures.com for a great picture of Hayley doing a Twister move into all four states at once.Around Four Corners we came to the nasty realization that we would have to start heading back towards the east if we were to have any chance at all of returning to Mount Pleasant in time for the beginning of the kids' swim team season. So, with heavy hearts we moved toward the rising sun for the first time in over a month! By this time all the snow had melted in the lower elevations. But the pass we took through the Continental Divide still had several feet of snow on it even though the temps were into the 40's. The snow was really heavy and wet and made perfect snowballs. I hit Cindy square in the chest from about 50 feet away. We were joined on the snowy ridge by truckloads of snowmobilers getting in the very last few days of thick enough snow for the year.
Just what is that thing climbing up that tree? I wasn't sure at first and had to seriously fight down the undercurrent running within me that said,"If you shoot it, you can examine it much closer." Well, we're pretty sure its a porcupine. I didn't even know there really were porcupines anywhere. But we got out of the car and chased it up this tree. It had really long sharp spines all over it which, I guess, narrows it down to at least something in the porcupine family? But we let it go without shooting it anyway because Cindy said she wasn't sure how long to cook it and we didn't see one of those "Turkey's done" poppers anywhere on it.