Today we lost one of our beloved four-legged family members to kidney disease.  It was a tough decision to make and one we always prayed wouldn’t come.  We’ve been very fortunate to have had almost 15 years of loyal companionship with Abby.  In her younger years she loved to play fetch with the ball in the back yard and would wear herself out trying to catch the light beam from a flashlight as we moved it across the floor.  She has been a great traveler and a trouper when it came to hikes until these last few years.  We made a huge mistake when we went back to Minnesota for the holidays.  After several visits to our own vet, being hospitalized and knowing she wasn’t going to fully recover, we…

We’ve been asked why we haven’t posted anything since the first part of November.  Not sure other than leaving Oregon was sad and anticipating our trip back to Minnesota was all that was on our minds.  So I’m going to talk about Christmas back in Minnesota and come back to our adventures in California later. Joe and I could hardly wait to get back to our kids and grandbaby Cate in Minnesota.  We gave ourselves 5 days to make the 2052 mile trip back.  We were so fortunate.  The weather was perfect which made the roads perfect.  We left CA on Dec 16th and were in MN on Dec 20th.  We were so excited to hold our granddaughter but our dogs had other ideas.  Both ended up sick on the…