Question Is.... Can We Make it to MPLS and Back?

It's been a week of preparation here for our upcoming brief journey to the Twin Cities. I of course waited until the last possible week to realize I had to do something with our menagerie of animal companions before we leave next week for the trip to Minneapolis. I managed to find a kennel about 7 miles out of St. Hilaire to drop Duchess off at (Thanks Dawn!) and they'll give Duchess a nice bath and nail trim while we're gone, so I'm looking forward to coming back to a fresh dog. Kind of reminds me of putting our old dog, Pepper, in the kennel over in Edmonds and coming back to a "skinnier" dog after her "shave and a haircut - two bits." We found a home as well temporarily for the bunnies and guinea pigs (with Sandy Drevlow). That leaves the love birds that Andrew left behind, but thankfully we've gotten rid of those noisy irritating creatures by finding a lady in town here that has a large number of birds already and was happy to take two more.

As summer continues its march to an inevitable conclusion, we've been the recipient of a couple good torrential downpours. We had a fantastic thunderstorm about three days ago with a great light show from the heavens. I took a ruler out to a Rubbermaid bin in the back yard and measured 3 inches of fresh rainfall from that night's storm. While great for the farmers, we now have a lawn that has largely been resurrected to its lush green carpet appearance, so it looks like I'll be mowing upon our return from the trip, the first time I'll have mowed since sometime in June. I haven't been looking forward to that, as we have a bit of a neighborhood yellow jacket problem. They've been swarming along our fence line the past few weeks in the back yard and seem to be everywhere. The traps I set out last week have about 3/4 to an inch of yellow jackets apiece (probably a good 300 to 400 in each), so that's at least a small dent in this year's population. Hopefully by late August most will have died off and I can mow the lawn in peace.

In other trip preparation news, we went to Wally World this past week and got an oil change and a fresh pair of sneakers (tires) on the Weasel. The right front tire had had a slow leak for some time, but seeing as we have to make it 300+ miles and back next week, I figured we should go ahead and replace the tire altogether along with the other front end tire for balance. All told (with the oil change) it came to $129.99, so not a bad deal at all. I think the ride in the Weasel is a little quieter now too on the new tires. So my next blog update will likely be about what we did on our mini-vacation to Minneapolis.