Yesterday Husband declared that after we move to Minnesota we are taking a trip to Alexandria so he can buy a canoe.
Husband has wanted a canoe for decades. He chose the Alexandria shop on the recommendation of someone from the Wenonah Canoe Company. While Luverne isn’t close to any reasonably sized lakes, there are several navigable but smaller rivers nearby that he is excited to explore. The rivers in our current location are either too shallow or too big (The Missouri).
He wants a one person canoe. That is fine with me. I had a truly wonderful and exhilarating experience on a BWCA canoe trip with my church youth group in 1974, and that was all I needed to have a happy life. We canoed in Manitoba during our courtship and early marriage, but my canoeing days are over. He can take his day excursions on the Rock River and Big Sioux River, and I will sit comfortably at home with the dog, drawing on my Dutch roots and practicing niksen.
What are your most interesting canoeing or boating experiences? Does niksen hold any interest for you?
We live about 40 miles from Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It is very rugged, with buttes, gullies, strange rock formations, rattle snakes, big horn sheep, bison, and prairie dogs. We have enjoyed hiking there since our children were little.
In about 1998 the United States Forest Service built a 144 mile trail that connected the South Unit of the park with the North Unit. It is called the Maah Daah Hey Trail, which is a Mandan Indian word for “grandfather”. Bicyclists, hikers, and horse riders use it a lot. We have hiked a mile or so on it.
In 2023 a bridge near one of the trail heads collapsed into a gully, and that area of the trail has been closed. The Forest Service is responsible for its upkeep, and recently started bridge repair. Although motor vehicles could have hauled in the bridge materials, the Forest Service chose to use some of their pack mules to do the hauling so as to not disturb the landscape. The Forest Service has about 300 pack mules that are kept in Missoula, MT and help out with projects like this in our region. They only make the mules carry about 150 pounds of material at a time, which is about only half of what the average mule can haul. They retire the mules when they are about 25 years old and care for them for their remaining years. I think that is sweet. Who knew the Forest Service owned mules?
Where are your favorite places to hike or ride? Any experiences with mules or donkeys? Felt mulish lately?
This Thursday a photographer is coming over to take pictures of the house and yard for the real estate listing. We spent the weekend packing eight more bankers boxes full of books and sheet music and stowed them and the fourteen boxes of books we packed last weekend in the empty closets in the basement bedrooms. Then we put all the basement furniture back in place as the painter finished up painting the basement last Friday. We also took lots of unwanted things from the shelving in the furnace room and put them in Husband’s truck so he can take them to the landfill tomorrow. I straightened out the remaining items on the furnace room shelves so they look neat. Our new house has tons of storage and we don’t need to take any shelving with us. We hope to use the furnace room shelving as an added enticement to buy our ND house.
Today I am painting the front door and a couple of small garage doors and touching up some chipped interior paint upstairs. My goal then is to stow anything that might make the upstairs look cluttered in the upstairs closets. It will come out after the photographer is done on Thursday. I also plan to straighten up the work benches in the garage so they look neat and tidy. All this is an exhausting nuisance, but I guess this is the game you play when you sell your house. There is some consolation in knowing that everything we box up or toss out will make the final move that much easier.
I am thankful our realtor thinks our house looks nice enough as is (now that the basement is newly painted) without asking us to do any more “prettying up”. The idea to paint the doors was mine. (I intended to paint the front door 10 years ago when we had new siding put on, but never got around to it.) We will have to be vigilant about keeping the house as clean and uncluttered as possible though, for when the realtor has people over for a showing.
What kind of “prettying up” would you need to do sell your house? Any long put off chores for you?
Happy Solstice, Midsommar, or whatever you call the first day of summer! The days are longer now, which I appreciate.
I have heard from two friends lately who have experienced some very long days. One is a college friend who lives way up north in Sweden near the Arctic circle. She posted a photo of her and her husband dropping her brother off last week at the nearby train station at 2:00 am. It was fully bright out. She then mentioned that when she and her husband arrived home at 3:00 am, the sun was starting to rise. It must have not got dark there at all! She and her husband are evangelical ministers. I doubt they will be doing too much carousing at Midsommar festivities, which I understand can get pretty wild.
I also heard from my friend the international pet sitter. Her most recent gig took her and her husband to Dawson City, Yukon, to take care of a Great Pyrenees dog. It was a huge, friendly dog who wanted to sit on her lap. They loved the Yukon. The permafrost makes it impossible to pave the streets. The local liquor store and Drivers License Bureau share the same office space. She took a photo at 10:00 pm and it looked like she took it at noon.
I think the farthest north I have been is Gimli, Manitoba. I like it dark when I sleep, and I don’t think I would adjust well when it would be light all day.
What us the farthest north you have ever been? Any Midsommar celebrating today and tomorrow?
Well, on Monday we phoned the real estate company in Luverne for the first time and explained the sort of house we needed and our price range. Wouldn’t you know it, they had a house that met our needs and price, and later this morning we are having a video tour of the place. I am quite sure we will buy it. We saw lots of interior photos already.
It was built in 1998, with tons of room, so that we and my best friend who will live with us will be able to stay out of one another’s way and have privacy. It is a ranch style home with a finished basement. There are five bedrooms and lots of room for Husband’s books and Friend’s quilting stuff and visiting family. It also has a hot tub on the deck. The hot tub in the header photo is not the hot tub we may own. The one in Luverne is more square with a canvas cover.
I would never in a million years buy a hot tub. I don’t even own a swimming suit! We are just not hot tub people. I am more excited about the large gas range with double oven in the kitchen.
Any creative ideas what to do with the hot tub? Any interesting home buying stories?
Last night, Husband decided he wanted to have hot dogs for supper, so we headed to the grocery store. At the checkout, we were behind another older couple sporting Methodist t-shirts, and a young Hispanic woman buying rolls and a papaya. The papaya turned out to cost more than the young woman wanted to pay, so she declined to buy it, and only got the rolls.
She used her cell phone to pay for the rolls (I have no idea how that is supposed to work), and was on her way out when the clerk called her back because her transaction had been declined. All this was transpiring while the other older couple was bagging their groceries. They and we noticed all the issues with the young woman’s purchase.
I intended to step in and buy the rolls for her, when the other older woman jumped ahead of me and paid for them. I exclaimed “I was going to do that!” Husband said he was going to do the.same thing. We all laughed except the young woman, who was deeply embarrassed and said it was just a glitch and showed us on her phone the balance in her account. There wasn’t very much in it. We told her she was sandwiched between two old couples and to enjoy the rolls.
Who have been the helpers in your life? What is your favorite sandwich?
About three years ago, Husband and I planted a climbing rose along the railing of the stoep. The rose did very well. It is a winter hardy Morden Rose from Manitoba. Two years ago we planted two more of the same variety along side it. I had no idea they would take off the way they did. You can see them in the header photo and below. There are hundreds of blooms and buds on them. The only problem is that the railing isn’t high enough to support them, so I have to tie them to the railing with twine. I have tried to wind the stems and branches in the railing, as well. We often underestimate how well our plants and shrubs are going to do. It really is too much rose for the area, but I love them.
Our raspberry patch has exploded with new growth this spring, and I anticipate having one of our largest crops ever.
Our neighbor trimmed a tree that had been shading them, and we got lots of rain. I am sure we will be giving lots away, since there is no point in freezing them since we are moving.
We also have far too many books. The shelves in the next photo were full of books until yesterday, when Husband culled some and packed the remainder into 15 banker boxes, the boxes all labeled as to genre and topic. The books will stay in the boxes until after we move to Luverne.
We had to do this so that the painter can paint the wall behind the shelves. The culled books are in the back of his pickup and are going to the landfill on Tuesday. Our next chore is to move the remaining bookcases away from the wall so that she can paint behind them.
We will just empty the bookcases and put the books and record albums somewhere temporarily until the paint is dry, then put them back in the bookcases. We won’t box them up until we actually move. Many of them are our cookbooks, so we will need access to them.
It is hard to decide if I would rather have too many roses, too many raspberries, or too many books. I suppose there are worse things to have in excess, like a friend of ours who has 17 house cats.
What do you have too much of? What are your favorite roses? Any favorite raspberry recipes?
It’s been a good busy week, got a lot done this week. Finished planting those two food plots, got the four wheeler running again, set a tractor on fire, fixed several little odds and ends, and I felt pretty brilliant. And then I forgot to check the fuel in the big tractor and ran it out of diesel fuel. Diesel engines you have to prime them to get running again. Dad always warned me about not running a diesel out of fuel. I’ve done it twice now. It’s not as big a deal as he was afraid. The typical highs and lows that we should expect from a life, right?
A few weeks ago I talked about getting a ton of chicken layer ration and it was meal, not pellets. The co-op did agree to take it back and get me pellets. I loaded the pallet of meal in the truck and hauled it to Plainview. They took that out and when he picked up the new pallet I thought the pile was leaning precariously as he put it in the truck, I strapped it down and I made it 19 of the 20 miles home. When I slowed down to talk with a sheriff deputy at least it fell into the truck. I was pretty sure I was gonna lose it at some point; the question was where.
It’s been a while since I had to unload a ton of feed by hand, but this way I could re-stack it properly. Evidently there is some skill to stacking bags on a pallet because it was hard to get them level and flat. Five bags per row, 40 bags total, and it depends on how full the bags are and the density of the material inside and how that all works. But it is stacked in the feed room and it’s not going back in the truck. It will be fine.
Bought some 12 foot tall, 12 foot wide pallet racks at an auction. My summer padawans are back so we assembled one of them in the shop in place of the loft. The whole loft idea, while good in concept, wasn’t really gonna work too well in my application, so this was a better idea.
Hauled some machinery I’m not using anymore up to the next Plainview auction: a 6 row cultivator that’s been parked in the weeds for many years, I probably only used it a handful of times after I bought it. I washed off all the lichen and it looks pretty good now.
And the old running gear from this spring when I put the seed wagon on the new running gear.
Got the grain drill and the corn planter cleaned up and put away.
Had the boys haul the empty seed bags out, and we picked up a bunch more sticks from the new waterway.
I put the seed wagon away and I even sat in the office and did some bookwork one day! We’re six months into 2025, it’s about time I started doing bookwork.
I went to a seminar on oats that was very interesting. Learning the lifecycle of fungal diseases was interesting, like how the spores can travel and how it might take two or three disease cycles for certain fungus’ to reach what we call ‘economic threshold’. Perhaps my biggest take away was that oats and straw are really two different crops. I’m gonna sacrifice one to get the other. Typically the stalk (straw) isn’t quite dry and ready to be cut, when the grain is at its optimum point. But cut too green and it won’t go through the combine.
Oh yeah, that tractor I set on fire. It was just a little fire. The old 630. There’s a 4 inch piece of rubber fuel line that I knew was old and cracked, and in fact I bought some new hose just last week. I used the tractor and left it sitting outside running for about 15 minutes while I moved some stuff inside. When I walked back out to the tractor, the fuel line was on fire, and it had dripped down onto the block, which is covered with some grease and oil, and that was on fire, too.
I may have panicked just a little bit. The first thought in my head was to push the clutch lever ahead, (because the clutch / belt pulley was rattling and I was going to put it in neutral and engage the clutch to stop the rattle) And I had walked out there to do that, so the hand clutch was the first thing I grabbed. Butu then the whole fire thing… and it was still in gear and I was standing in front. It just nudged me a little bit and then I turned off the key and then my mind was racing and I thought about dirt and I thought about gas and I thought I should really just go get the fire extinguisher and I sort of chuckled as I walked into the shed thinking ‘well good for you having a fire extinguisher out here’, and at the same time thinking ‘if I use this I have to get it recharged’ and when I came back the fire was mostly out. The little bit on the hose I was able to blow out, but some of the grease underneath was still burning and I thought oh heck, just do it, and I pulled the pin and squirted a little powder on it and then figured, well it was already open, may as well hose the whole thing down just to be safe. I should replace the hose now.
I have often written about Husband’s frets and worries, but if I am completely honest, his anxiety doesn’t hold a candle to mine.
This has been a sleep deprived week for me due to progress we made toward moving to Minnesota. A local realtor is coming to the house today to give us the lowdown on what we can sell this place for, and I got some financial stuff done so that we can contact a realtor in Luverne next week to start looking for a place for us there. We plan to buy in Luverne before we list this place in Dickinson. I even found a Dickinson moving company that will move us.
My anxiety comes from getting too far ahead of myself. I woke up at 1:00 am on Wednesday worrying how my best friend, who is moving in with us, would get a Real ID driver’s license if none of the utility bills in Luverne are in her name. This is completely irrational, and it shouldn’t be a problem, but that is how far ahead of myself I am getting. I keep telling myself “One step at time!” to slow myself down. The progress we made toward moving is good, but it also makes real all the unknowns about what is going to actually happen. I hate not being in control!
Do worries wake you up at night? Who have been memorable control freaks in your life?
Having YA living here makes me ruminate on almost a daily basis about how much the world has changed.
She’s in San Antonio now, at a conference. For once she is a participant, not a staff and she is enjoying that juxtaposition. One of the things that has changed significantly in the travel/meeting/conference world is the choice of activities. I organized a group in San Antonio once and the activity options were golf, tennis and the San Antonio city tour (with lengthy stop at the Alamo). Golf was the activity of choice on almost all trips except Hawaii, where the catamaran tour was always the big winner. As the years went by, people got more adventurous and wanted more options. Golf fell out of favor and “experiences” got more popular. Cooking classes, art encounters, biking, kayaking, horseback riding, ATV adventures. Zipline infrastructure grew and grew as did the number of folks wanting to try it.
The activities that YA had to choose from included morning walks, morning jogs, the traditional city tour, Seaworld and…. puppy yoga!
I’d never even heard of yoga until I was in college – heard a talk about transcendental meditation and Ram Das and yoga. That was it for probably over a decade. Once onboard a ship with a client, I did a session of yoga with her and promptly pulled a muscle in my back that took weeks to feel better.
Now there are multitudes of yoga types (Kundalini, Kharma, Buti, Tantra) but lots of stranger versions that I’ve seen. Hot yoga is done in an overheated environment that encourages sweating. Naked yoga – well, I don’t have to explain that. Goat yoga. And, of course, the popular puppy yoga. YA signed up for puppy yoga on both of her allotted activity days. She has sent quite a few photos and it doesn’t look like any yoga is getting done at all. That’s my girl!
Have you ever tried yoga? Do you have a favorite activity when you’re traveling?
Trail Baboon 