Timing is everything...

Today we will hopefully find out when Tramp 1 will be getting an MRI of his back. We met with the Dr. a week ago Monday and he ran some tests and found nerve damage - not good. In fact, the Dr. came to me, held my hand and said how sorry he was... Sheesh, he doesn't know us well - we were prepared for this. We knew that surgery was most likely the only option left. The MRI will be the deciding factor and if surgery is required, the nerve damage might be reversible in time. The last spinal injection did help with the pain but the loss of strength in his leg is troublesome.

And as the saying goes, timing is everything. Tramp 1 is difficult - he doesn't want to stop any activities. So on Thanksgiving day we embarked on a trip to go help out his elderly parents. We arrived at their home on Friday and made it back here on Monday night. We traveled over several mountain passes and through snow, ice, fog and sun. The entire trip was over 1200 miles - and I had to drive... Several hours into the trip, Tramp 1 discovered that he had forgotten his wallet in another coat... But it was probably for the best as the Dr. said it wasn't a great thing to have him driving much right now.

We were able to have a break along the way at my Mom's where we enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner with family. It is very humbling every time we travel on a holiday - it is us, a few other passenger vehicles and many trucks. Those great truckers really work hard to keep our nation supplied with food and retail goods. We tend to take it for granted that whatever we might want to buy will always be there on the shelves when we go to the store. And it usually is, thanks to those hearty truck drivers traveling our country no matter the weather.

These are California big horn sheep in the Yakima river canyon south of Ellensburg Washington. It is the only photo I took during the entire trip.

On our travels we saw antelope, deer, bald eagles, golden eagles, ducks, pheasant, Canada geese, herons, trumpeter swans and several coyotes. And we probably missed a few critters along the way.

Our weather here has moderated in the last two days. It was -9 the night before we left on our trip and snowing Monday night when we got home. But today looks pretty warm - we might hit 40 - that will be so nice!