Our Week In Western Wisconsin

I can't believe how fast things keep flying by! We made it safe and sound to and from Wisconsin. We left early Monday morning - we drove the red jeep down with Kharren, Khartem and Alex and dropped Hayde off at the kennel on the way. Kharren brought the jeep back after stopping at her friends for the night - since we drove back.

Upon landing in St. Paul, MN Monday evening, Jeremy's friend's wife, Emily, picked us up from the airport and then we met up with some of my college friends that I ran with at Bucca's for dinner. It was really nice to see some of them again. We then stayed at Dan and Emily's house for the night and Jeremy's mom came the next day to take us out to do some errands while Dan and Emily worked. We ended up at good ol' Fleet Farm for a couple of hours! We had to get the necessary camping/fishing gear for our trip to the Chippeawa Flowage and unfortunately, Dan ended up working Monday, Monday night and Tuesday so we didn't see him until we were ready to leave Tuesday evening, but of course, Jeremy had left him in charge of supplying all the camping gear. Hence we had to make several stops to pick up supplies on our way, of which Dan ended up having at home, but didn't bring. Anyway, we made it to the flowage Tuesday night and found my parents. They decided to take a quick vacation and meet us up there since we were't going to be able to swing by Sheboygan on this trip.

We spent much of the next day fishing. My parents headed off in the morning in the canoe and later, we took my dad with us fishing in the boat while my mom read. We went back out in the evening and I ended up catching a nice walleye and Jeremy caught a small rock bass. Somehow, this years fishing wasn't as successful as the last couple of years had been. Later after we came in, Jeremy, Dan and I headed to the bar to get more leeches and to grab a drink. We found out fishing this year was really good, however, everyone else was fishing for non-walleye. They were catching tons of pan fish, crappy and bass. So, the next morning, we all headed back out while my mom finished her book and we saw lots of pan fish. My dad caught a little walleye. We did manage to forget the leeches we bought the night before. Eventually, we gave up and headed back in for lunch before packing up to leave. We did get to see a nice barred owl that landed a few trees back from the campsite!















We spent one more night with Dan and Emily and the next morning we headed out one more time to do some errands and pick up some stuff we can't get here. Jeremy's mom then came to pick us up and we headed back out to her house. In the evening, we loaded up the canoe, took a last look around for anything else Jeremy wanted from the house and then headed over to his sister's, Brandy, house. We had a nice visit her and her extended family and got to look thru some of the pictures his mom had that Brandy was now storing. There are a LOT more pictures that will need to be sorted through at some point. We then headed back to his mom's for the night.

The last morning, we were able to get on the road quicky as the truck was already loaded so we just needed a quick breakfast and to say good-bye at the New Richmond house one last time before it's officially sold to the new owners. We drove and drove and finally got to the eastern side of WI where we made a small detour and stopped by my parents cabin just outside of Florence, WI. It turned out to be a nice lunch stop. We then had to hit the road again and drove to Sault Ste. Marie where we stopped for dinner and gas before we hit the border. We managed to find the US customs this time to export the truck Jeremy's mom was giving Jeremy. That went fair enough and we headed across the bridge to Canadian customs. That took a bit longer, but it all worked out. They had to look up the value of the truck and in our opinion it came up much less than what we expected. Turned out, we got a $60 deduction for it being a gift and then we had to pay 5% on the rest of the value so we lucked out they didn't find the value to be any higher. We then made our way thru the Ontario side of Sault Ste. Marie and eventually came across a hotel and stopped to see if they had any open rooms - they didn't, but called one down the road that did. We headed to that one and found an open room and decided we'd call it a night as it was around 11pm by then and we were pretty tired.

We got up and got a quick start on Sunday and drove and drove and drove. Turned out we drove thru rain, if not a downpour, the entire way! I guess at least we weren't missing any nice weather. We stopped in Sudbury for lunch and finally got to our area of the world by the time our gas was running low. Any of you that have come this way know how secluded it is and how unlikely it is to find a gas station. I suggested to Jeremy we stop in Matawa (~1-1/2 hrs from here), but he decided to keep going. I double checked the map and suggested again we stop, but he didn't want to so we kept going as the needle on the gas tank got lower and lower. Finally when it got below the E, we somehow came across an open gas station. All these town between Deep River and Matawa are only 3 houses at tops and only have old long-ago vacant convenient stores/stations besides having nice big rolling hills. Whew! I was about 99% sure we'd be stuck out in the middle of nowhere with no gas and it'd be a good 1/2 hr or more of a drive to the nearest gas station.

We got gas, and headed on, passed Deep River, passed Petawawa and out into the country again to pick up Hayde at the kennel. She was super excited/hyper when we picked her up and she quickly quieted down in the truck and snoozed on the way home. She wasn't sure what was going on and maybe still confused as who we were, but as soon as we got in the driveway and opened the door for her, she exploded with excitement! She was home and she knew it!

The cats were excited to see us. Somehow Kitty managed to gain two pounds last week going from 7lbs to 9lbs! Not sure how that happened. I had asked Amanda downstairs to come check on them once and to switch out their food containers I had prepared. I'm guessing she fed Kitty along with the food I had set out for her. She's now on an immediate crash diet! My plants were still ok, but some where looking kinda sad and I'm really hoping not all the new flowers that came out last week died from lack of water. I drenched them several times since being home so hopefully they'll all bounce back. Everything else seemed good. We did get a chipmunk in the house at some point that Kitty had cornered. I eventually got it out of the corner and Kitty chased it, caught it by the butt, let it go again and then I trapped it in a book and managed to get it back outside. The red jeep was in the driveway so Kharren managed to drive that home fine, we finaly manged to get all our keys back so I guess it's now back to life in Petawawa. I will need to work on getting the truck thru the safety, insured and licensed. I managed to get Jeremy's outdoors card upgraded to a fishing & hunting outdoors card along with getting him into the antlerless deer draw. Back to work tomorrow...althought Jeremy's got the day off as it's Canada Day.