Saturday, December 13, 2008

Friday is Ice Cream day

I sort of started a bad habit with the girls that we would get an ice cream on Friday's after I picked them up from school, or if we were running around doing something.

Of course now it seems a little more inconvenient to go and get an ice cream. It is only about 4 miles to Artic Circle to get an ice cream, but compared to our location before, it seems so far away.

This last friday the girls reminded me that it was ice cream day, and I wasn't really all that excited to go get ice cream... it seems like I am always so swamped with unpacking or organizing stuff to be more functioning. (It was just last week sometime that I finally found the girls' lunch boxes.) I was thinking also that it would be nice to go do something fun or something other than watch TV, now that we have it, and it was too cold to really go out and play. Sooooo.... we got ice cream.

For those who haven't been out in this area, when you drive into "town" if you want to call it that, you start here from areas full of houses and developments with entrances and then there is just like nothing but open farm land, maybe a few farm houses but mostly just open fields and then you reach the "town"area with a grocery store, a few fast food places, a gas station and a few banks and other little stores. While we were headed to "town" I noticed a deer, and then looked and noticed another, and another.... there where like maybe 50 of them. As I looked at them, I realized they weren't deer, or not the normal deer that we have seen out here before, they had white belly's and like a black and white head... they just looked different.

I of course am trying to show the kids as we are passing them so they can see them too. I am trying to recall our Yellowstone Guide that had all the animals on there and what they were, and I tell the girls, oh those aren't deer-they are goats, oh no they are long horned sheep, no wait they are pronghorned sheep... by this time Emily is saying, "They aren't sheep or goats mom!" I am still trying to identify them to the best of my knowledge of wild animals here in the state of Utah, and I am still struggling. I finally say, "I think they are pronghorned deer." And that is what I stuck to. There were just everywhere, all around this little farm house in the middle of this big field. We got our ice creams and headed back home, and saw them again. This time we see more, there are more on the other side of the house which we missed before coming in.

Of course this is bugging me because I am not sure what they are called. I come home and look up on the internet about pronghorn deer, and see the pictures above, and say...YES that is what we saw. Then Robert's mom comes out to our house and says, "We saw that big herd of antelope that Robert said you saw the other day." I told her I thought they were Pronghorn deer, she corrects me and says, no they are antelope. I guess even when you try to be right, you are still wrong.

If they are pronghorn deer or antelope, I don't know what is correct. But these are the best pictures of what we saw that I could find. There were at least 50 of them, if not more. It was fun to see them. Now I keep trying to think of things I might need to go into "town" to see if they are still around. I have gone a few more times, but it has always been at night - and of course, I couldn't see a thing.

Maybe next ice cream day we will see them again.

1 comment:

Wendy said...

Pronghorn is correct. A guide at Goblin Valley told us that there are no real antelope in America (funny, considering the song . . . where the deer and the antelope play). Those are awesome pictures!