A New Purchase For Sue

In my last blog I mentioned that we were at Gander Mountain when we received a call from Andy telling us that he and Sarah were getting married.
I guess I should tell you what we were doing at Gander Mt.
We had gone there to pick up some stick on letters and numbers for our new boat. One thing lead to another and we ended up in the firearms department.
We were looking at the pistols in the case when Sue went silent and was pointing to a Beretta with the total look of lust in her eyes.
The sales associate knew at that point he had a sale. She ran it through it's paces and before long she was the proud new owner of a Beretta Bobcat 21-A eight shot semi-automatic.

It is a perfect purse pistol for her. It is very easy to handle and weighs only 11.3 ounces.
Needless to say, the tin cans have been plinking here at Coyote Ridge ever since!

Great News To Report

Please allow me to explain. Friday night we were at Gander Mountain when my cell phone rang. It was our youngest son Andy calling from his home in Seattle. I was dealing hot and heavy with a sales associate so I handed he phone to Sue. From the tone I determined it was good news of some kind. All of a sudden Sue squealed "Andy and Sarah are getting married!" Wow! We took turns talking and congratulating them, of course asking a million questions. The tentative date is the first part of September, 2011.
He wanted us to be the first to know, followed by his older brother Ben, then his grandparents.
As Sue said. "We couldn't have chosen a more perfect daughter."
Here is a picture of the happy couple taken on a recent trip to San Francisco.

We are looking forward to a great wedding in Seattle!

Ahoy Mate!

As Captain of the new watercraft I though I would introduce you to our new purchase.
For years we have been interested in things that float on water and have owned everything from a canoe to a 24 foot cabin cruiser that we had in Florida.
Now we own the smallest craft ever....a nine foot inflatable boat.

And to power this balloon on steroids we ordered this electric trolling motor.

I doubt we will do much water skiing with this bag of air, but that was not the intention of the purchase.
Many times while camping we wish we had a small boat to explore some of the coves on small lakes. This looked like just the ticket to achieve that need to see what is around the next bend.
We wanted something that was light and did not take up much space in the camper. Deflated, the boat is about two feet long and a foot wide weighing only 20 pounds.
It has a 600 pound weight capacity so we are well within limits.
Sue is making us pirate outfits, so we should be rather intimidating out there on the open water!
Now if I could just figure out how to christen the boat with the ceremonial bottle of cheap champagne!

A Great Weekend!

Like I said earlier, picking a new campground is like eating from a box of chocolates.You just never know what you are going to get. This campground was amazing! No pool, no games, no activities....just big beautiful sites and huge trees.

It is located South of Wells, MN in a very quiet area with no traffic noise...and get this....no noise from trains, not that I mind that, but it seems all campgrounds must be built near railroad tracks.
There were only 30 sites total so we had plenty of privacy because of the large sites and limited people using the campground.
We had access to the lake from our site and our dog Lucy really enjoyed the water. Can you tell?

We tend to explore for about a fifty mile radius wherever we go so this trip took us to Vinje,Iowa...population 6. There was a church and a bar. We went to the bar. The food was really, really good and inexpensive!


We ventured into Albert Lea and went to a very nice farmer's market. They had such nice produce, so I purchased chocolate chip cookies....they were delicious!
After that we went to the mall and a larger sporting goods store where Sue wanted to look for shorts. She found several pair that were just perfect for her. While she was trying them on I wondered around the store looking at things I didn't need until I spotted a rubber inflatable boat that would be just perfect to keep in the camper to use for fishing or just some lake cruising. At that point...I just had to have it. So like the cookies....I bought it.
Soon I will post a picture and other details.

They're Back

Coyote Ridge is back to normal after hosting sixty relatives from Sue's side of the family for a reunion last Saturday.
The "event" was a huge success with everyone enjoying themselves. We enjoy hosting the gatherings and always look forward to seeing everyone.
I suppose I should explain the headline. Regular followers know that we have a trail camera set up in the woods to capture wildlife in their environment.
So far the digital camera has captured images of a coyote, deer, squirrels, turkeys, wild cats and raccoons.
It appears that there is no shortage of raccoons out there as every night several are caught wandering through the area.


It is Wednesday already as the week trudges on like a herd of thundering turtles.
We are going camping this weekend at a new to us campground in Southern Minnesota. It is a small county park South of Wells,Minnesota.
Checking out these new places reminds me of a box of chocolates....you never know for sure what you will find.

A Few More Pictures

Andy and Sarah are on a jet plane (don't know when they'll will be back again) heading home to Seattle. We sure had a grand time.
I dug up a few more pictures from the weekend.
No rhyme or reason to them other than the fact that they involve recreational shooting, food and nature...That is a great combination in my book!



I must say, the gals and guys did a great job dusting the clay pigeons!
We are seriously thinking about hitting Seattle next month for a few days. We will check flights this week and see what we come up with.

What A Great Time With The Young Folks

Our youngest son Andy and his partner Sarah have been visiting the Midwest from Seattle since July 1st. They spent time in Minneapolis, Wisconsin, my folks home in Des Moines then up to see us.
They arrived here last Thursday and we haven't slowed down yet!
Thursday evening we went out for pizza and twenty five cent pitchers of beer at our favorite pizza place.
Friday was spent getting ready for a family reunion at our home on Saturday.
What a time that was. We had about sixty folks here at Coyote Ridge and I know everyone had a great time! It sure was nice to have all of us together!
Sunday we toured a local winery and of course sampled along the way....ten in all to be exact. We then purchased a bottle and sat outside enjoying the company and beautiful weather.

We were then off to hike back to a waterfall in the area where we think we found a fresh cougar track.
It was off to the store where we picked up supplies for Mexican food that our sons cooked for us. They are fantastic cooks and really know their way around the kitchen. We are spoiled as Andy cooked huge breakfasts for us each morning.
To wrap up the weekend we do what all good Minnesotans do on Sundays....we broke out four guns and shot clay pigeons and tin cans. The ladies did real well. Hey wait just a second, the guys in the kitchen and the ladies shootin stuff? Oh well, it works!


It was wonderful that Ben and Anna were able to spend so much time with Andy and Sarah this weekend. Everyone gets along wonderfully.
Tomorrow the kids will fly back to Seattle. We will be very sad to see them go, but we know they have their life there.
We are so blessed to have such wonderful and caring sons.

Picking Up After The Storm

About a week and a half ago we had straight line winds of 70+ mph and tornadoes roll through our area.

Coyote Ridge was spared the tornadoes, but caught the brunt of the winds.
Sue captured a few pictures for you after things calmed down a bit.





We were very lucky that only one large tree came down in the yard and only four or five in our woods.
The rest of the cleanup was mostly branches, limbs and leaves.





Since I work for the American Red Cross, I was busy helping with relief efforts while Sue our son Ben and his wife Anna were responsible for Coyote Ridge cleanup.
By the time I got home, everything was cleaned up with the homestead looking fabulous. Great timing Bob!

It Has Been A While!

My last post was almost two weeks ago and talked about how busy I had been responding to tornadoes that hit our area.
Just as we were winding down with those, another batch of twisters hit our area again damaging almost 400 homes.
Working for the American Red Cross keeps me busy, especially during times like this.
Personally, we had a few trees down and power off for about 40 hours. Basically, our woes were just an inconvenience. Our Red Cross Facebook Site
I finally had a day off today so we had 18,000 pounds of river rock stone delivered. With shovels in hand we re-did several landscape areas.
We have a family reunion scheduled for here next Saturday so a few more projects "need" to get done.
Great news to report....Our youngest son Andy and his wonderful girlfriend Sarah are visiting from Seattle. They flew into Minneapolis and will attend a family reunion on her side in Wisconsin, then visit my parents in Iowa then make their way back to Minnesota to visit us for a few days.