It's good to be back in the land of blog today, although as I perused the archives of a week gone by it becomes painfully clear that little to nothing happened in the world of politics during my self-imposed exile. Northwest mechanics are still on strike and local Democrats are wasting not a second to take advantage of the situation for some face time. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Chavez the madman. Cindy Sheehan is still in Crawford.
I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards who were forced to stay home and pay attention to the news this week.
On the other hand, I spent my week sleeping on an air mattress in the largest of Minnesota's state parks. Along the way we had a few adventures. Squeezed in an obscene amount of fishing over the course of the week and pulled a number of attractive smallmouth out of the St. Croix River, despite the park's best efforts to discourage the arcane pastime.
The raccoons started visiting on Monday night, a mama and four babies who knew no fear. Their presence required the locking up of all foodstuffs at night, which we did in the safety of the family van. Nevertheless, the little vermin would stroll around our campsite after dark practically under our feet, careful to stay out of the firelight or wake our two extremely effective watchdogs, who never did detect their presence before we were able to roust them from their slumber and point out the intruders in the beam of a flashlight.
Wedensday we left our youngest daughter in charge of the dogs while mother and I went fishing in the afternoon, and it should not have come as a surprise when, an hour later, she arrived at the shoreline to report through tears that she had somehow let both of them get away. Thus began an hour-long hunt, me on my five-year-old's bike with 12-inch wheels, and the missus in the van. Both were secured, though the retreiver required us to pull nineteen porcupine quills from various parts of his anatomy as a result of their foray.
The wife and I decided at that time that our vacation would be much more like a vacation without the presence of the dogs and road-tripped back home Thursday morning to leave the dogs in the kennel for the final forty eight hours of our vacation. Not only did this improve the vacation greatly, our fake dog-barking at the coons on Thursday night actually proved more effective than the real thing earlier in the week.
A solid trip to be sure, but no one is happier than I to be home again. Slept in my own bed last night and sat on my own throne this morning. I love our park system, but it is a constant battle to appreciate the natural beauty while fighting off the influence of the environmental lobby that attempts to control every thing you do while there. How do you tell a six-year-old boy that he is not suppposed to pick a single flower, throw a single rock into the river, or disturb a single bug? As if the eco-system is so fragile that the tossing of a single stone into the river will lead to the immediate destruction of the entire 30-plus thousand acres.
Even the shower stalls in a state park scold you, by shutting off every 30 seconds as if to say, "How dare you put scrubbing off the day's grime above the precious resource of water."
I don't know how the french do it.
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