TooBusyForWork

Mississippi

We left Minnesota and headed south. I was tired of cold and wet! We had to make a decision about where to stay for about a week before our appointment in Alabama, and Kevin found a great Corps of Engineers spot in Mississippi – Enid Lake. It is about an hour south Memphis on I-55, so off we went. We spent Thursday, 24 September, in Pine City, MN at the Walmart. Friday night we actually spent at Big Woods Lake next to the house to do laundry with our good washer/dryer combo. We also had my oldest son’s family over for dinner – Papa John’s pizza! Saturday was spent at the Walmart in Bowling Green, MO, and Sunday we stayed at the Elks Lodge in Sikeston, MO. We arrived at our site in the Wallace Creek campground at Enid Lake on Monday, 28 September. Our site is 96, and it is on a tiny loop with only 3 other campsites. The campground is astonishingly quiet, and no one has been camped near us the entire time – nice! It is very shady, and Kevin had a challenge trying to find a spot for the Starlink. As it is we have decent service most of the time, but it randomly drops for a couple of minutes until a new satellite comes into view.

While we are here we went to the Memphis Camping World on Friday, 2 October, to do the exciting task of buying a new toilet! (Life as an RVer is always fun, right?) We had an Thetford AquaMagic II toilet, and it was just a pain to do routine maintenance on. What maintenance is required on a toilet? The rubber seals dry out and need to be replaced every year or two, plus there is a ball that acts as a stopper when the toilet is not in use that needs replacing occasionally. To do those tasks on the Thetford requires completely removing the toilet, and Kevin just got tired of it. So he bought a Dometic 410 which is designed for easy maintenance. I like it because of the water it fills the bowl making it better at cleaning. The whole removal and replacement was done in less than an hour the same day we bought it. I like it! It is much quieter than the old one, an unanticipated bonus. Oh, and we did get some good Memphis BBQ, but I can’t remember where.

Wednesday we went to Vicksburg National Battlefield. As with most Civil War sites, it was sobering. The Visitor Center was smaller than most of the others we have seen, but the historic battle lines were marked extremely well. Vicksburg was won only with a prolonged siege, so the troops on both sides really dug in their artillery. Since the park was established in the 1890s, there were still people around who had fought and remembered the details. Here are some photos from the trip. Note these are from my iPhone since I forgot my Canon!

Lots of the monuments to various military groups were this type of tall pillar.

And of course the number of Civil War graves was incredibly sobering. The taller stones identify soldiers by name. The shorter ones for those unidentified. There are lots, and lots, and lots of shorter stones.

The real jewel of the park are the recovered remains of the gun ship “Cairo.” The Cairo was sunk in the Yazoo River near Vicksburg in December 1862 when the Federal forces were probing the area and removing mines. It was one of the early “Ironclad” boats, and when it hit mines it sank quickly into the silty water. All the crew was rescued, but the boat was left with virtually al the personal effects inside. The boat was left in the silt until 1959 when the location was discovered. It was gradually brought up in pieces in the early 1960s and amen to a shipyard along the coast. It was taken apart, cleaned, and stored. But the climate was not salubrious, and the NPS accepted title to the Cairo and moved it to the Vicksburg park. It was partially reconstructed and preserved until a huge canvas tent. Amazing!

I love how NPS used the laminated wood support to show the original outline of the boat while supporting the original remnants.

The hull showing where the mine blew a hole in it

We ate lunch at Walnut Hill, a relatively famous restaurant that has been serving Southern food since 1980 in an historic 1880 house. They had a plated lunch special. I had fried chicken, smothered squash, and green beans. Kevin had baked brisket, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The vegetables were fabulous! My chicken was very good, but Kevin said the brisket was just so-so. Of course it was LOL! I would recommend it anyway.

We did drive the historic tour route, and the old buildings were impressive. The town was so thoroughly destroyed in the siege that all the buildings are post Civil War.

Yesterday we drove to Memphis again to get Kevin a new pellet grill. He’d had his eye on one, and Camping World had it on sale plus he gets another 10% discount so the price was right. He made burgers on it today, and I think it will work out well. He is really having to play Tetris in the storage bays to get it in though!

Tomorrow we head to Red Bay, AL for work on the MH. Saturday is always a good day to find a campsite during this “snowbird migration” season that is beginning. We have appointments Monday through Thursday, and I am SOOOOOO looking forward to getting the bathroom/bedroom slide fixed after the idiots at Velocity screwed up the cables.

Finally traveling south

We left Silver Bay, MN today – FINALLY! The original plans had been a couple of weeks in Minnesota, then head to Missouri and Arkansas for a while. The truck troubles squashed that idea, but we are finally headed south. We did enjoy a few days along the North Shore before we left though.

Grand Portage, MN is an historic town dating to the fur trade days and Colonial America. It has an absolutely fabulous museum run by the NPS at the Grand Portage National Historical Site. We have been to the historical site itself before, but for some reason we missed the museum. We were lucky that one of the historians was on duty, and he gave me loads of resources for a future trip we want to take along the Canadian fur trade routes. I love doing RV trips that combine history and sightseeing. We have done a number of the US National Historic Trails – Lewis and Clark, California, Oregon, Mormon, Nez Perce – and really enjoyed them. Canada doesn’t have the same type of trail mapping, so we will have to put the trip together on our own. But here are some pictures of the historic site, a re-creation of the Northwest Territory central rendezvous site.

The trail begins showing dwellings of the Ojibwa who were the primary traders. They used birch bark for lots of things including their homes.

Next on the tour was the boat building with recreated native and voyageur canoes. This shows a close up the construction. This is exactly the same basic method as the much smaller native canoes. After all, the process had been refined for hundreds of years!

Construction technique of a voyageur canoe

This shows the exterior with the birch bark seamed with pitch mixed with charcoal to make it easier to see where it needed patched. And these boats did need patching and repairing every night. They carried tons of freight and many voyageurs, and even with extreme care they were fragile.

The tour then continued to the main English buildings.

This building has the kitchen and dining areas. Note the stonework in the chimney. They used authentic wavy glass in the windows!

This was where the store rooms and trading rooms were located.

It was a very class conscious organization. The executives from Montreal came only once a year for a few days. They sat at their own table with special dinnerware. The “middle management” sat at a separate table, and there was a third table for “supervisors.” The working stiffs at outside. Each set had different tableware.

Dining area used when the management team came from Montreal once a year

Wool blankets were in great demand as trade goods. They were lighter than buffalo hides, and easier to dry if they got wet. They were used as regular blankets and also made into coats.

The next day we went to Glensheen Mansion in Duluth. Wow, it was fabulous! Worth every penny of the admission. This was a huge home with numerous outbuildings and gorgeous landscaping that was also obviously a true family home. It was so overwhelming that I didn’t even try to capture it – my little camera could never do it justice. This is the one picture I took from next to the lake looking up at the back of the house. The interior was just as impressive as the exterior. The Glensheen family moved to Duluth when the father was appointed attorney for what would become US Steel. He was also a bank director and a major shareholder and director of numerous mining and other companies. He was also active in state and national politics. The house is filled with mementos of his travels, and he had good taste.

Tonight we are spending the night in the Walmart parking lot at Pine City, MN about 60 miles north of St. Paul. Tomorrow we will put the MH on a site at Big Woods Park but spend the night at the house. Gotta do laundry! Planning on dinner with the local kids and grandkids too. Then off to Red Bay, AL. Don’t know what we will do on the way – we have about a week to spare.

Catchup addendum

Oops, I forgot some things! I wanted to post some pictures of the scenery we have seen along the trails. So here you go!

A bit of yellow in the aspen and birches

This was more mining history in Babbitt, one of our stops

I love the mosses, and they are abundant here. I’m not 100% sure these are real mosses – they might be some type of lichen – but I like them.

There weren’t too many flowers left, and a lot of the ones that remained were pretty beat up. I got a few pictures though.

This flower was still abundant, and the bees loved it.

And hopefully that is all I forgot! We are in Silver Bay Municipal Campground now, and I can see the lake and Wisconsin from our site. Not too well, but I will take what I can get! Oh, and if you have a choice about how get to Hwy 61, don’t take MN Hwy 1! The surface was awful, and we kept activating the collision warning on the dash cam!

Catchup Part 2

We have done so many things here and ridden so many trails that it doesn’t make sense to do a day by day summary. We road pretty all of the Prospector Trail, a good chunk of the Taconite Trail, and a small section of the David Dill trail, so I just grouped things together, and I think it works.

First we haven’t seen many animals. That is as expected because the RZR is so noisy! We did see a few though, and I even got pictures of some. We saw more deer, squirrels, and various ground squirrels of course plus a few eagles and hawks – no pictures of those

A different kind of animal I can’t get away from!

There were a few wood carvings along the trail to Ely. A few had cancer ribbons also carved. I didn’t look into the back story.

Couldn’t decide between “animal” and “quirky”

And then there was this fabulous laundromat in Ely! First, it was clean. Second, it was reasonably priced. Third, the names! This is just four; all of the ones in the entire place had this type of label. We walked around laughing at them.

Ely laundromat had all their washers and dryers named!

Yesterday we went to Voyageurs National Park. We had lunch at Arrowhead Resort, a respectable tenderloin. It wasn’t quite up to real Iowa standards (though it was labeled “Iowa style”), but the onion strings along with it were great. Here’s a bit of photo dump from that trip.

The only eagle I got a picture of. We saw a number of others.

First stop – guy lived here for about 50 years

Second stop – Hoist Bay with its logging history

One way to “camp” in the park. Note the hot tub on top!

The way I would prefer. All the sites we saw had a dock for the powerboat

And a sunset picture with a loon – classic Minnesota

Today we go to a campground in Silver Bay on the shore of Lake Superior.

Catchup in two parts

I have been delinquent in posting because the keyboard case for my iPad broke! I absolutely despise typing anything but the minimum on a display keyboard, and I delay it outrageously. I tried to get one from Amazon, but because it has a lithium battery the options are limited. Sigh. We finally bit the bullet and had it delivered to Duluth yesterday, the closest pickup spot that would accept lithium batteries. Kevin needed a repair kit for the toilet too, so two birds with one stone! So there are lots of things to post. I will do it in two phases.

I ended the last post before we took the dinner train in Duluth. It has a museum, so we planned a 45 minute tour. That was NOT enough. What an absolutely fabulous place. Much of the rolling stock was under cover so it would be fine to even visit this location in the winter. Here is just a smattering.

Mr. Crooks was the owner of the rail line. This was a reproduction of the first engine.

We only got partway through! Then it was time to get the tickets for our dinner train. There were 4 person tables, and we shared with a couple from Fargo, ND. He was a rail fan that retired from the track maintenance crew of one of the big railroads, though I have forgotten which one! The ride was very nice, and the food was great. I thought I took a picture, but I didn’t, so you will have to imagine a fabulous salad, the beef rib, perfectly roasted potatoes, roasted carrots, and a crème de pot for dessert. Yum. Everything was perfectly cooked. I wish the trip was closer to the lake, but I guess the railroad wanted some space between it and that sometimes very story place!

We have driven the little Bronco all over the place. Not a fan. It took quite a while to turn off all the nanny features, but I managed. If I ever reach a point where I need car automation to stay in my own lane, I will give up my license! It wasn’t even very good at it, disconnecting whenever the side markers on the roads moved away from the lane or were just hard to read. And it could not stay well centered on curves, moving left then right before the road straightened out. Ugh. But it took FOREVER for the truck to get repaired!!! The one week we were promised turned into 3 weeks and 6 days. And even then the only reason it happened is because I have a friend who shall remain nameless that is high enough up in the state government they could put pressure on the dealer. They had asked earlier if they could help, and I said we were going to wait on the dealer a bit longer, but I finally gave up. Shockingly the truck was ready at 1:00 pm the day they took them to task. The holdup had supposedly been that they didn’t have a replacement driveshaft and couldn’t get one. Umm, guess there was one in the store room somewhere! I am still grumbling.

The lack of a vehicle to carry to RZR led to Kevin having some interesting rides between campgrounds. We stayed at the West Forty Campground until Monday 13 September. We then moved to back to the Lake Vermillion OHV campground. It meant a 45 mile drive on the trails for Kevin, but they were well marked and not too rough. We stayed at one site here until Thursday, 17 September when we had to move to another site. We are staying here until Monday morning now. Here was our view this morning.

Not bad, hey? However this lovely quiet campground is now getting full of some big groups that are much noisier than the ones here last weekend. Sigh. We have just been amazingly lucky, but it had to run out sooner or later.

We have taken some great rides in the RZR, but I am going to put that info in the next post. This is long enough as it is!

Soudan, Ely, and nearby locations

The appropriate sign you are in northern Minnesota in late August, early September is that sandals with socks is perfectly acceptable!

We moved to the DNR State OHV Campground near Soudan on Sunday, 30 August. The sites are HUGE, 60-80’ long pull throughs with picnic tables, and fire rings. There are pit toilets one each of the three loops plus a central flush toilet/shower facility. It even has a OHV wash area. Absolutely no trees, but hopefully they plant some next year.

Once we got settled, we drove the truck to Hibbing on Monday because we had a leak in the differential. Oops! Bad drive train, and the dealer said it was unsafe to drive. Big ouchie. They have to order parts, and it will be a week, so they gave us a loaner car. It is a brand new Ford Bronco, and it is a dog. I admit it is the lowest level of trim, but it is not comfortable at all. Hopefully we only have it a bit over a week.

We visited an historic Finnish homestead, the Wirtanen Pioneer Homestead. It is an original homestead site begun by a single bachelor farmer/logger in 1904. The first thing built was a sauna, of course, but the house and other outbuildings are impressive. It has an obviously loving historic association taking care of it.

While we were in the Soudan area we took one long RZR RIDE, 90+ miles, on the Prospector Trail. The most notable site in my opinion were the boardwalks over bogs. There were a number of them, but the longest was a full half mile in length! They are controlled by gates that enforce the 65” maximum width of the trail. Lots of those along the boardwalks and bridges.

The trail itself is jointly maintained by DNR and local clubs. This is one of the nicest trail stops I have ever seen. There is also a fire pit and a large collection of split firewood in a covered area. Oh, and a spotless two hole outhouse!

Nice facilities on the Prospector’s Trail

We also spent a day just sightseeing around Ely. Back when I could move better, we did a number of wilderness canoe trips out of the town, and we re-visited the area. The trees are just starting to turn, and it was generally beautiful. Wednesday was Kevin!s birthday, and we had an absolutely fabulous dinner at Insula Restaurant in Ely. Good food, good service, and a great rye whiskey Old Fashioned! What can be more Minnesotan than walleye and wild rice?

On Thursday, 3 September, we moved to the West Forty RV Park in Gilbert. Sites are crowded, but FHU and we met friends here. We have been camping with the Lopers occasionally for 25 years or more, and it was great to catch up. We are now planning on staying here through Thursday night. We need to be in Duluth on Friday for a train trip, so I sure hope the truck is fixed by then!

Shell Lake and surroundings

We ended up driving to Iowa for Kevin’s hearing aids on Wednesday 18 August. It was a long drive down to Iowa City, but he really likes the hearing aids. The technician made five separate programs for him, and two were for music! One is for crowded spaces like restaurants, and another is for normal conversation. I do t remember what the fifth one is! We spent the night at home in Cedar Falls, then drove back on Thursday. The cats survived us being gone a day, though Luna followed Kevin everywhere he went for a few days!

On Friday we drove into northern Minneapolis to get n alignment done on the motorhome only to find out they couldn’t work on it because of the SafeTSteer! I was pissed! I drove the MH over 200 miles round trip for nothing. They recommended another shop, and we made an appointment there for the next week. I am really glad we decided to stay in Shell Lake more days since it gave us time to do a bunch of sightseeing and get un-pissed. Kevin’s last day of arm movement and weight restrictions expired, so we spent a couple of days running around in the RZR. One day we took the Wild Rivers Trail which is an old Chicago Northwestern rail line bed. Wisconsin has totally embraced UTVs, and this trail is one example. Very well maintained with good signage and surface. It is an old rail bed though so not a lot of curves or ups and downs! It was beautiful though – so very lush and green.

Surprisingly we saw very little wildlife. I am guessing the habitat is so rich they don’t have to be around people to find food and shelter. The deer and sandhills were about all we saw.

Another day we wandered north and spent time in the Washburn County Forest. Much more interesting riding, mostly on fire roads. Lots of ups and down and curves along with a more varied scenery.

We even took a train ride just north of Spooner in Trego. A scenic train runs over old Chicago Northwestern tracks a a very slow speed, but they had a dinner train reservation available so we took it. Dinner was actually very nice with white table cloths and napkins plus good service. The steaks was nice, but the carrots and potatoes were fabulous!

We left Shell Lake on Wednesday, 27 August and spent the next two nights at the Grand Casino RV Park there. Very nice place, and under $50 with tax! Great laundry room too. We were here to be closer to Blaine’s TruckAlign shop where I had a Thursday morning appointment. The MH has been pulling to the right, so I got it aligned front and rear, swapped the weird wear tires on front for a pair in the back, and got the SafeTSteer perfectly set. It took 6 hours, and the bill was only a bit over $700. I commented to the guy it was rare to pay less than $1000 for anything MH related, and he said they hear that a lot. Today we left Hinckley and drove to Whiteface Reservoir campground. It is so rural I can’t even give the name of a nearby town! Awfully pretty though. The white bucket is where Kevin stores our potable water hose which is doubling as a stand for the Starlink dish. We even have electricity!

However we weren’t aware we can’t use the RZR here, and even if we could there aren’t enough trails to make it worthwhile. So we will be checking out of her on Sunday and heading to Tower and the Soudan Underground Mine ATV campground. The sites look nice, and there are a lot more trails up there.

Ukein’ away

The appointment with the cardio PA (I had mentioned I thought it was an NP last post) went really well. I just cannot say enough good things about Mayo! She had an entire hour allocated to the appointment, something unheard of in today’s medicine. She explained the next steps (yearly TAVR appointments), answered all our questions including what was the anatomic reasons the pacemaker was needed after the initial discharge, and generally reassured us. I think Kevin has decided to continue his cardio follow ups in Rochester rather than find a cardiologist locally, and I thought it was a very good idea too. It turns out she was the person assigned as triage when his ECGs first were sent to Mayo, and she said she immediately got the senior folks. I guess it was really, really bad! She said she had worked in EDs for 20 years and a few years in the Mayo cardiology department, and his PR delay numbers were the worst she had ever seen! Medical things are NOT what you want to be remembered for LOL! But he is still recovering well. He walked 4 miles today (two separate 2 mile trips), and his blood pressure, pulse ox, and heart rate are all good. Here is the cool X-ray taken this time. You can see the pacemaker, the valve mesh, and the pacemaker leads.

We left Rochester and headed to Twin Harbors. It was an easy ride except for a mess of construction in Duluth, but Duluth always has construction! Our campsite was boarding x a spot in a parking lot next to the small fairgrounds buildings, but we did have a 15 amp electrical connection to keep things charged. The forecast had called for rain, but we sure didn’t have much which was a good thing.

The Silver Creek International Ukulele Carnival was enjoyable for me, not so much for Kevin. Lots of nice people, but he was very disappointed in the beginning class instructor. He was very much in the “you can’t do anything until you know all of this stuff” mentality, and that is pretty unusual. Most instructors are getting students playing simple songs after the first 2 chords! I was very challenged in my classes, mostly because I had trouble translating the GCEA tuning instruction to my DGBE tuning. In the group of maybe 300 ukes, there were only 5-6 other baritones! I still learned some new stuff, and I came back with sore hands and back! I am definitely not used to playing that much! I also learned I didn’t practice the mass ukulele pieces at a fast enough tempo – lesson learned. Three hundred ukuleles playing together did sound pretty cool though.

There were some excellent performers, but I forgot to get pictures of most of them. I did of this duo on Friday night, because how often do you see a ukulele and an accordion together? They were really good though. The carnival began Thursday afternoon and lasted until Sunday morning when it ended with a gospel strum.

Sunday morning we headed back south through Duluth again and into Wisconsin, continuing south. Our campground in Shell Lake is gorgeous! I didn’t have high expectations for a campground specifically for UTVs, but our site looks more like a USFS or NPS site than anything else. Excellent separation between sites with lots of trees and understory hiding other campers. Our site (#6) is a 60’+ site with full hook ups. We looked at the municipal campground by the lake, and it is very crowded. We also visited a private campground nearby, the Red Barn Park. It was also very crowded though it was loaded with activities for kids including a lovely sand swimming hole. We much prefer where we are.

We only put out the firepit when we are enjoying the outdoors, and we are definitely doing that here. Lots of birds, insects make a loud hum, and little critters running through the leaf litter adds up to a great location.

Tomorrow we are heading back in the truck to Iowa. Kevin has some hearing aids at Costco. Hoping they let him hear his ukulele better! He says a number of chords sound the same because he can’t hear the higher pitches. Kind of hard to learn that way!

And we are off (after more Mayo excitement)

We are now in the motorhome beginning our long-delayed adventures! It was not without some more drama though. Kevin attended his first cardiac rehab appointment on Tuesday, 21 July. The nurses weren’t happy with the 3 lead cardiac monitor results. Luckily he already had an appointment scheduled with a local family practice NP for a post-TAVR checkup. Mayo had told FP to do a full 12 lead ECG, and it looked bad too. Lots of phone calls between Mayo and NP resulted in us going to the local emergency department where yet another ECG was performed by the ED doc. It looked even worse. Phone calls back and forth this time resulted in an ambulance ride to Mayo! I ran home, picked up clothes and supplies for both of us then followed in the car. He spent the night of Wednesday on a monitor, and he had a pacemaker installed on Thursday morning, sigh. We knew it was a possibility after TAVR, but the timing was odd. When he left Mayo the week before, the ECG was perfectly normal. He is recovering well, but he couldn’t drive for 10 days, and he still wears a sling to remind him not to raise his arm higher than his shoulder and to pick up no more than 10 pounds with that arm. Those restrictions end on 20 August, and is ready for it!

Since we had to cancel a planned RZR expedition to northeast Iowa, we were able to attend a mini-family reunion held every year at our son’s and DIL’s lake cabin. The weather was cold and rainy, and it was still great fun. We didn’t have all the kids there, but we had most of the grandkids. Here is my son and Kevin contemplating the state of the world.

We spent yesterday at a local campground getting the rig in shape and moving in. After one trip for the stuff we forgot (!!!) I drove north of Rochester to a nice campground – Hidden Meadows. Nice place. Kevin has a slew of imaging and ECG appointments tomorrow, then we see the cardiology staff (I think it is an NP) early on Thursday morning. We will then come back to the motorhome and head to Two Harbors, MN for their ukulele festival which begins that afternoon. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Fireworks, new planting bed, and the Mayo Clinic experience

Kevin and I are kind of past the age of lighting fireworks, but we do like looking at them. Turns out my neighbors brought some friends over and obviously spent hundreds and hundreds on fireworks! This is just a tiny sampling of what we saw sitting on the deck. There were actually lots of fireworks going off all around us, but we chose to just take pictures of these. Pretty, aren’t they?

I was also astonished and pleased that the fireworks really did stop by 10 or 11! Last year they were still going off at 2. This year the police department had put signs up at many intersections in town providing the rules for times the fireworks were allowed (two nights) and the penalties if you violated the rules ($250 fine!). I think a lot of people in past years just didn’t know. For whatever reason, the notices were very effective.

Another big thing was I got some backyard renovation done. The poor honey locust tree on the left is the second tree planted in this location that has done poorly. I blame the nasty clay dirt that surely came from digging the basement, so when the landscapers I hired recommended a drainage system they used on a lot of commercial properties I was all for it.

Poor sad honey locust (left) and the very healthy elm (right)

The drainage project begin with digging a hole twice as big and twice as deep as the tree would be planted. It was filled with some gravel and then weep tile was installed. You can see a bit of it below. The old clay nastiness was taken away, and the tree was planted in compost.

They staked the tree, put trunk wrap on, and installed the new garden bed. That job included removing all the sod, edging with new bullnose edgers, and putting down 4” of mulch. They also removed the old edgers around the elm and put down new mulch for consistency. To maintain the bed, the relocated some sprinklers and installed probably 250-300’ of soaker hose before they put the mulch down. It will be fabulous!

Now on to the transcather aortic valve replacement Kevin had at Mayo in Rochester. We drove up on Sunday (it is only 2 hours), and spent the night at the Even Hotel, 5 minutes or less from St. Mary’s Hospital area where the surgery would be. The room was nice, the bed not quite soft enough, and the recliner didn’t recline enough! Oh, and then they closed the restaurant that night because the cook didn’t show up! We ended up eating out of the vending machine. Add in parking being another $20/night, and I don’t think we will return.

Monday morning bright and early we dropped the car with the valet parking folks and made it to check in before the scheduled 6:30 appointment. They took us to the room Kevin would be staying in before and after the procedure; handy to not have to move around. His surgery was later than planned, and he didn’t leave for that until after 10:00 at which time I went to get some breakfast in the hospital visitor cafeteria. Nice omlette with fruit for $12! It was not quite 2 hours before he came back from the anesthesia recovery area. He was a bit sore because of the HUGE removal pokes they make to push the catheter to the right spot in his heart, but otherwise he was just tired and groggy. We had dinner around 5:00, and the food was great! Pot roast, carrots, bread, drink, and sherbet for him. Salmon, asparagus, roasted potatoes, strawberry shortcake, drink, and a fruit cup for me. I saved the fruit cup for my morning breakfast while Kevin had eggs and turkey sausage. We were cleared to leave a little after 10, 28 hours from when we showed up. We decided we would prefer spending Tuesday night at home instead of the hotel, so we checked out and headed home. I was exhausted, but it was worth it to be home. We both took a well-deserved nap, and I slept like a baby last night!

Mayo Clinic scheduling has actually been pretty good. He goes back middle of August for a bunch of follow-up tests and an appointment with a cardiac NP. He is also scheduled to start cardiac rehab when we get back from our fall trip around Halloween (got to be back to vote in person on 2 November!!!!!). He is just supposed to take it very easy for this week, and then gradually resume activities beginning next week. He feels pretty good, or so he says. Hope everything stays that way.