Daily Archives: October 30, 2013

(continued from Sharieland Once More 10)

Red car’s about halfway to the end. Notice the blue speck of glass glinting in the foreground. Not placed there by me.

Woody looks on. He’s also keeping one eye on the thick and dark rhododendron behind him for possible wild things approaching. Turns out he had good reasons for fear!

Red car passing a knotweed plant.

Bigger Philo rocks off the high side of its highway. Ellie the Elephant may have handled some of these.

Still chugg’n along.

The 2 present Philo cow patties again.

Reddie’s reached the end! The fantastic news is passed down the line from the Cat equipment on. Pink Piggie gives out a series of loud victory snorts.

Two more cars of similar size follow the red one all the way down the highway to the end. Then the larger gray vehicle below tests it out. No problem for him (or her) atall, with its much bigger and higher wheels.

Satisfied that the highway can serve its function, Woody explores a bit of the central park-like region of Philo, finding a giant hole (to him) just beyond. What is it?

Epilogue:

On this same day, I returned to Philo for one last visit after taking the above photos and exploring more in the surrounding hills. I found a cow peacefully grazing about 20 yards from the beachy area. Hucka D. later indicated that this is the one and only Hater the Cow, who hates laziness, even though it itself a particularly lazy variety of its species. Psychological projection we’re talking about here. In Philo I began to gather up my toys for departure. All were exactly in the same condition I left them except for one: Lazy Sideburn Man, who was completely demolished, limbs and pieces of torso found in a tight circle beside his still intact folding chair. I was so shocked by the spectacle that I forgot to get my camera out for a picture to record for this blog. It was obvious to me that the cow must have singled this one toy out from all the rest to wreck havoc on. But it didn’t make sense (and still doesn’t): Wouldn’t a hulking cow knock over at least one or two of the many other toys standing on this beach? I must reinforce that Lazy Sideburn Man was *destroyed*, while none of the other toys were even touched. This event must be included, in my opinion, with the other woods mysteries I’ve encountered down through the years now. I’ll try to remember to take at least a photo of the pieces I found of the toy on the beach.

So ends our “Sharieland Once More” series of posts. I hope you enjoyed them. I certainly had fun taking all the pictures and playing with the toys.

(continued from Sharieland Once More 09)

Two more shot from Won Valley, the first of an interesting sheet of water pouring below a rock that caught my eye…

… and then a quick shot inside a bramble of bushes surrounding the stream just below Heart Line…

… before Woody and I moved back to Philo beach to get an update on the progress there.

Toy avatars don’t seem to do much when I’m not around to oversee them, so I wasn’t surprised that not a lot of work was accomplished back in Philo on the road. So I gently admonished the bunch of ’em, and told foreman Red Skeleton to crack the whip and get the highway done so that I could test out some trucks and cars on it. Soon the Cat equipment was revving up their engines and back to the task of shoveling, hauling, and rolling. By the time I took the below picture, a main road through Philo had been basically created all the way up to Pink Piggie, about half the job.

The foam cow who was supposed to be on the lookout for the much larger, meat versions of itself had fallen asleep, and needed rousing as well. The beginning of the road can be seen just behind him, or the part of Philo closest to Heart Lake (background).

Just in front of this, we have Foreman Red Skeleton (left) with some kind of blue herbivorous dinosaur, perhaps a brontosaurus, Lazy Sideburn Man (center) and Foam Cow and several cars (right).

Move it, move it!

Red, Bronto, and Lazy (as we’ll call them) with a piece of porcelain dug up by the workers in their midst.

Avatar view of the work being accomplished, with Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Moving away from Philo again, I ran across this very interesting double wall — a channel, really — a bit up Earth Stream, before it enters basically impenetrable rhrododendron fields.

Earth Stream just upstream from Philo, at the upper edge of its soggy delta area.

Ellie, once more, and the rocks she’s moved, seemingly.

An annoucement by Red Skeleton: The Road is Done! A car is nominated for a usability test. I believe Red selected this car because it was the same color as himself. A privilege!

The car’s made it to the T-Rex, and so far so good. But there’s at least 2/3rds of the road to go.

A tricky spot between two larger stones. They mark the entrance to a mini-gorge of sorts as well. Careful!

(continued in Sharieland Once More 11)