Pictures From Our Sunday Drive.

More money than sense, we saw this huge metal sculpture of a raptor on a pole. It needs some landscaping, or something.

A second beautiful, blue day with low humidity is today. It is a day where I don't have to be anywhere in particular. Yesterday, my Handsome Son and I took a Sunday drive, although he cautioned me about the wisdom of such a quaint action given gas prices at nearly $4.00 a gallon.

These are pictures from our drive.

You can tell my son is from Wisconsin; he is the King of Cheesy Expressions. I've asked him when he will shave and get a haircut. He replied, "The cows don't care Mom." He's working this summer milking cows for my Dad.

The covered bridge in the background was built over the Pine River to replace a cement bridge in 1997 by my father and other volunteers from the town of Springwater.

This is a better picture of the Springwater Volunteer Covered Bridge.

People with much more money than I built many houses like this the last decade around our beautiful lakes.

The property values around our lakes belie the high unemployment, low wages, and aging population of the rest of our counties here. It is difficult to find well-paying jobs without traveling 50 miles or more. This year driving around and seeing the crispy, brown lawns, and dying trees outside the oasis of my watered yard and the family garden, I feel worse times coming. Times where a lot of the cattle herds and animals will be sold off. Family pets will be sold because people can no longer fed them (I saw a small herd of Tibetian yaks listed on the Appleton, WI Craigslist on Saturday, as well as a beautiful black Arabian mare.)

The high temperatures, almost more than the drought, have been oppressive this summer. And this morning, a mutual friend's friend FB entry told of the suicide of the husband of a childhood neighbor's husband.

My father asked, "Was he a farmer?"