April 23, 2017

Springtime in Minnesota 2017


Springtime in Minnesota 2017
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for April 23, 2017



It was a beautiful day in Minnesota on Saturday so I woke up early with the desire to get outside and enjoy the weather.


We bought a couple of these new bird feeders that suction cup to the outside of our windows so we can see the birds up close.  I absolutely love them!

You can see them here if you're interested:



I saw a Goose nearby me on my morning journey and he looked like he really wanted me to take his picture.  So I walked pretty close to him, but then he started honking at me really loud so I stopped.  Maybe I mis-read his desire to have his picture taken.


When I came home, we thought it would be fun to take the dogs swimming.  They always love to do that.


I don't know how much time Ole Sunny has left with us.  He turns 12 this week and has started having some heavy breathing issues.  He wheezes constantly and really has stamina issues.  He's been diagnosed with Laryngeal Paralysis and we're trying to decide if it makes sense for him to have surgery or not.  If he does have it, he'll never be able to go swimming again, which just sucks.  But it's hard to hear him struggling to breathe so much, so we're just not sure what to do with him.  It is no fun to get old.


Luke talked me into buying him a new drone this week even though we've never had much luck with them.  They always get lost and broken.  This time was no exception:



This is the drone we bought on Amazon:

   

In less than 24 hours after opening it, the drone was lost in the lake. It's too bad because we were having fun with it until it hit the water and was lost forever.


My old buddy, Orlando, brought his daughter down to see us sink drones and take our dogs swimming.  I think she enjoyed it.

   
Orlando likes to take me on new adventures around my house that I haven't done before.  This week we went near Carver, Minnesota to the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge.


Orlando tried to tell me if we were ambitious, we could follow this trail all the way to Bloomington and beyond.  I told him, I'm not that ambitious.


For a moment, I had a shiver go up my spine that perhaps Orlando was trying to lure me into the woods for unpleasant purposes.  Then I remembered that Orlando was my buddy and he's never tried to murder me before, so I had that going for me.


When he brought me to this abandoned house, I started saying my prayers.  Then I discovered that all of the windows were boarded and the doors were chained shut so there was no way we could get in to it.  This house is more than 100 years old and right over the river so I imagined that at one point in time, some family lived here and there wasn't anybody around for miles.  I have to imagine, there were some pretty spooky moments spent here.


The barn next to it said it was built back in the 1880's.  I couldn't find any leftover animal carcasses in there, but I'm sure they were pretty spooky also when they were still around.


Eventually we wandered down the trail and down to the Minnesota River.  It was an absolutely beautiful day!


There was supposed to be a bunch of rapids down the trail, but we couldn't find them so we climbed on to these rocks to see if we could get a better look.


We waved down this boat and asked where the rapids were.  They said we were looking at them, but the water was too high to get an appreciation of them, so we left.  Worst rapids ever!

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