New knowledge

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks but I just proved that to be false.  We had some mechanical trouble with our Saturn Vue recently and I took it into the shop to have it repaired.  It took a couple days for them to get to it so I borrowed Cassie & Jack's Dodge 4X4 pickup truck.  Gerry and I had discussed maybe looking into purchasing a 5th wheel RV and just having a truck for a vehicle.  All that went out of the window with driving the truck around these past few days.  We did appreciate the loan of the truck and it was a lifesaver.  Thanks Cassie  &  Jack.

Firstly, it gets terrible gas mileage and would eat us out of house and home while we were staying in one place for any length of time.  Secondly and most importantly it rides like a truck. Rough and tumble.  The steps are a chore for me even though I am tall and Gerry looks like she is climbing Mt. Everest whenever she gets into the truck.  Great for using around the cabin and nearby, but not for long drives.

The Saturn came back today all raring and ready to go.  I finally had the spark plugs changed at 88,000 miles and that helped.  There were other things wrong with it and the repairs took care of all the problems.  They also performed a recall for the ECM for the torque converter.  We didn't have a problem with that so I guess it is better now in that area.  Now to see if we get back in the 25mpg range for around town like we used to get.  I sure hope so with all the miles we will be putting on it in the next few months.

We have a lot of dead branches around the cabin area and we started burning some of them the other day.  It was a perfectly calm and cool day so we took advantage of that.  My job was to keep the fire going and Gerry collected the branches.  I also collected some of them just so you know that I am not lazy.  Somebody has to be the supervisor and I took the difficult challenge to be that person.