Day 6/365 Taking The Trash

Threw the DD in the car today to take pics around town while I drove.
Found out everything looks smaller in a photo: smaller mountains, smaller curves, smaller hills (whether looking up or down them), smaller strip malls (that's the silver lining right there).

So here's a small segment of our drive today entitled "Taking the Trash".
The reason we "take the trash" is not because someone is waiting for it on the other end and neither is it someone else's good trash that we are rummaging through on trash day. Our little town refuses to enact a leash law, mostly because of the "good ol boys" that run the town that grew up here with their packs of hunting dogs, and in the process developed a love for "dogs gone wild".

As a result, on Tuesday around noon, the town looks like a garbage truck exploded - the roaming dogs have gotten into everyone's trash and spread it far and wide.

So we haul the trash every few days out to the green boxes. It's a picturesque drive with switchbacks, narrow bridges, chickens, huge dogs that sleep on the shoulder of the road, and, at Christmas, The Christmas House (they fill their yard with *every* Christmas lawn ornament Walmart has ever sold). I especially like the big blow-up snow globes.

The top photo is the switchback curve, where you can meet yourself coming if you're not careful. If you pay attention, you can dodge the box turtles and black snakes on this section. To the left, the trees are scrub - they are growing out of rock, which goes straight up and forms Bald Knob. I've never been up there. One, I'd have to walk, and two, that's where the timber rattlers live. I know this because around Halloween time they crawl across our yard trying to get home to the rock mountain for winter.

This is the artificial dam, topped with a huge log jam. The town managers have gotten a federal grant to build a water park/tubing park along this river , but first they have to figure out how to blow up this dam.

They've been thinking on it for two years now.

Here's the interesting part: this dam is the view on the right side of the bridge. But if you look to the left side of the bridge, downstream, you see the water treatment plant.

I know I can't wait to go tubing there.

Further down the curvy road, braving the chances of bolting deer and waddling groundhogs, not to mention the occasional bear or coyote.

Still on the way to drop the trash off. Really.

Our green boxes, looking better than usual, since they've just been emptied. This is the hot spot for abandoning animals: a box of kittens or litter of pups. One of our upstairs kitties -Luna - was found here (the locals have a particular dislike for black animals -most of the abandoned and abused ones are black). Other things are left sitting outside the green boxes in the spirit of recycling: sinks, entertainment centers, recliners, and once, in a clean white bag, I found a white sweater, with a fur collar, and a $300 price tag still attached. Took it home and sold it on ebay.

This is the metal gate to the right of the trash boxes. It leads to the Live Ammunition Firing Range for our local police dept. That's why sometimes you see people dropping off their trash, and then they'll duck real sudden-like. It's the sound of the Glock's firing -we're still not sure which way that firing range is pointed. That gunfire is not to be confused with the gunfire from local hunters, or from locals in general taking potshots at silly women driving around taking pictures.