Hiking trip made possible by new car

My recent car purchase has enabled me to enjoy nature, which is especially valuable since the field season is over and I won't be spending half my waking hours tramping around in Ozark streams. So the Pie and I and the car headed over to Rockbridge State Park to tramp around some woods and streams. From the map, you can see there are a variety of trails to get lost on.


New car had to stay in the parking lot while Tasha and I went hiking. First we took the orange path, then got completely lost but somehow ended up on the white path near the Rock Bridge itself. So we went down to see it. But apparently it is closed - the boardwalk that used to go under it was missing and the path blocked off. But here is a photo where you can see under the bridge. Its not very bridge-like, really.



A stream emerges from under the bridge, from a cave that is further up the trail (which is still accessible, but there were lots of people down there so I passed on the cave - Devil's Icebox - on this trip). In the stream I saw several frogs swimming around, there is one in this photo:


And on one of the boardwalks I saw this interesting caterpiller shown in the photo below. Which reminds me of a funny story. Friday at work I had just sent one of our hourlies to go sign out a vehicle for us for the day, and turned to walk down the hallway. There was a big lizard there. Well, a skink. It was slithering/crawling/walking along the edge of the hall, trying to find an exit. So I called the hourly back to help me catch it. Then other people noticed and became interested. In the confusion it escaped into the mapping office, so we ALL went in there, including my boss's boss, and eventually the hourly was able to herd it behind some boxes and I caught it on the other side in an empty snack bag from the trash can. I took it outside and, unsure of where to put it, finally decided on my boss's windowsill. When I got back inside, I told him about it, and it was still there on the sill when I looked out. He didn't look out for about ten minutes though, and by then it was gone, and he declared that he didn't believe it ever existed. I think he was only kidding, though... Well hopefully the skink was okay, it was covered in crumbs when I let it go.

Where were we? Oh yes, the caterpillar.


After hiking for an hour the Pie was pretty hot (it was about 89 degrees out) so we went back to the car for a Pie Toy to play fetch in an isolated area of the stream. NO DOGS ALLOWED OFF LEASH, you know. Hehehehehheh.




After getting the dog soaking wet, we headed back to New Car and got in and went home, uneventfully.

You can see a short video of Tasha in the stream here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dvWT1Z4toY

New car

The other day I purchased a car. It is a 2009 Toyota Matrix. You can see it below:

As you can see, it is silver. Very silver! Not many pieces of black plastic trim slapped on there to get in the way when one is waxing it. Excellent. In its overall appearance, it has that modern-car-kind-of-lobed, overly-curvaceous appearance that most newish cars have (except the Scion xB, and that new Toyota SUV that looks like it is wearing a hat) and that I am not too wild about. It is not hideous, and it kind of has a cute face:


I think the face looks like some kind of chubby little animal that is very happy to see the viewer. What do you think?

Its appropriate that its face looks a bit chubby, when you consider its very wide rear end. I'm not sure the photos communicate it quite right, but even for a hatchback the car has a rather large aft region. Which is great because it means more storage space! Yes!

Some of you may be wondering why I have selected this car, so here is a brief rundown of the features of this make/model/year/specific vehicle that interested me particularly.

Reliability - the previous years of this model have all had very good reliability, as reported in several different places/reviews/etc. This model year has a somewhat different engine than previous years, but no problems have been reported yet.

Cargo - the seats fold down to form a nice big flat surface on which to put dogs. Of course, most hatchbacks do this, so this isn't really specific to this model. What is specific to this model (and its twin, the lovely Pontiac Vibe) is that the cargo area including the backs of the rear seats is all hard plastic. This is excellent, as dog hair will not cling to the upholstery - this was a constant battle in my last car, Carl.

Fuel efficient and good EPA smog rating - this model and year seemed to have quite high MPG (26-32) and air pollution score (6) as seen on the fueleconomy.gov website. It gets less mpg than say a diesel, but since I live in a city I was concerned about the poor cyclists, like myself. Of course now there is the VW clean diesel Jetta wagon....but its too new still for me to afford. Someday....

Manual - I only looked at cars that offered manual transmission...for personal reasons I suppose, and other than the Honda Fit they usually get better gas mileage, supposedly.

Safety - I really lucked out finding this car that came with the optional side airbags, raising its side crash rating from 3 to 4 stars! If I recall the front crash ratings were quite good for all the models I was looking at.

The negative points of the car are that the outside appearance is not too thrilling to me (lots of people say they like it, I think I just prefer the way older cars look) and that it is somewhat difficult for me to see out the back because I am so short. It is better than the Prius I was in, and hasn't really been a hinderance so far.

Hmm, let's see what else...the interior is comfortable and 'cool' in silver and black with some blue accents in the fabric...there is a 6 disc CD player, which is probably more than I can handle...it has cruise control, functioning A/C...no sunroof, but electric windows and such. It has heated wing mirrors - I had never heard of that before, but I suppose its a good thing.

Well, that's enough blathering on about the new car. It needs a name. And possibly a vanity plate (6 letters only, plus one space allowed). Suggest away :)