We took care of last minute details, packed up and then Paul Stack gave us a ride to Mesa Gateway for our flight to Minnesota. Everything went pretty well until it was time to take Gracie out of the carrier to be walked through the human scanner. They need to run the carrier through the scanner for the other belongings and that would kill her. She exited the carrier like a bronco coming out of the gate and it was quickly decided that she was too wild and they would do a private screening for her. George, or course, being the gentlemen he is was no problem. Once he was back in his carrier I got to go into the private room with Gracie. They took the carrier to be scanned and she walked around on top of the metal table, thinking it looked like the vets exam table and where was her good kitty treat?
We were assisted up the outdoor ramp to the plane with the assistance of nice young men who push everybody in a wheelchair up the steps. They allowed me to use the walker to get George and two other bags up the steep slope. The attendants were awesome and grabbed the cat carrier as well as the heavy bag with the electronics for me. I guess being old has its perks.
The lady doing the announcements was a hoot. She took what is normally a boring reminder of all the safety rules and made it fun. She stressed that all the bags must be on the floor. "I know you all want to show off that nice Gucci bag, but we know it's fake...cause you're flying Allegiant" "Be sure to kick your bag firmly under the seat, unless it contains a child or an animal. "Please don't put gum on the tray tables...your neighbor's hair will work very nicely". "We have a first time flyer today....and he's 98 years old!" Much applause and then "let's hear it for our pilot!" " If there's anything you can do that will make our flight more comfortable, please let us know" "If you have any special requests, please write them on a $100 bill and hand it to the attendant".
The flight went smoothly and we landed in St Cloud about 9:30PM. Stephanie & Ted had delivered the car earlier to the airport, complete with the requested litter box and litter. We loaded up and headed to the motel in Big Lake for the night, which is about halfway to our trailer. The cats examined every square inch of the room and I was pleased to see the bed had complete barriers so they couldn't hide underneath it. Makes it much easier to catch them when it's time to get back in the carrier.
In the morning we backtracked a couple miles to get a McDonald's breakfast to prepare us for the "set up". There was a house key with the car key, so that made it easier to get in. Pete grabbed the key to the shed and we started dragging out the electric cords and water hoses. Once we had electricity I went to work inside opening the slides. We were greeted with a puddle in the living room and the carpet on that slide was soaking wet. No water damage visible on the roof or walls, so not sure what happened there. We had to push the steps over just a tad to get the other slide to open and now it was time to bring the cats inside.
Pete worked on getting the water hooked up and had to deal with a leaky connection while I worked inside. My first thing was to look for evidence of mice, even though I had all kinds of rodent repellant out everywhere. It didn't take long to find signs they were partying in our absence. I removed all the silverware the kitchen implements to be washed and cleaned out the drawers.
Now it was time for the dreaded shopping trip. I took off to Cub to avoid all the construction the other direction and filled up my cart with $380 worth of food. Yikes. But when you are setting up you're basically starting from scratch. Got this hauled in and put away and jumped into the shower for a much needed cleaning and put on my nice warm jammies.
My last action was to set up the area around my chair, get everything plugged in and ready. I'm in the home stretch now! Then I picked up the blanket on my chair only to have a lot of rice and mouse poop scatter all over my nice clean floor. I can't repeat the words that spewed out of my mouth...words a lady shouldn't say. Course, I ain't no lady.
After vacuuming up the mess and shaking out the blanket to be put into the laundry.
Some things worked well. Our new Verizon 5G internet box works lovely and all is good.
I thought that I had a mouse and mouse pad up here, so I didn't bring mine from home. Ironically, now after getting rid of mouse droppings I need to go buy a mouse.
Tomorrow is another day and the weather is good working weather, so I'll start to tackle the yard and removing a lot of leaves, washing outdoor furniture and setting up bird feeders. It's one way to get my steps in. My focus is to get everything done this week so I can start in playing pickleball next week.
We're all pretty tired but happy to be in our Minnesota home.
