Seems like every city has a Martin Luther King Jr. St. or Dr. or whatever. I rode on this one in Atlanta, where I had to change buses. Luckily my layover there wasn't long.

  

     

     

  

I have no idea why they would want a pet squirrel, but they have one for sure.

One thing that has changed at my sister's is that the goat heard has grown a lot.

     

  

  

  

  

These goats were about two days old when this picture was taken. We had to bottle feed them regularly. I asked my sister why she milked the goat and then bottle fed that to the kids. She explained that it makes the goats a lot easier to handle after they get older. That's important if you need to milk them.

  

These goat pens are a new feature of the yard to me. Much bigger than the one behind the barn I remember from last time I was here.

The horse paddock is as it was, just with more goats in it.

  

Katie is now the author of a series of comic books. As a proud uncle, I'd call them the best superhero comics in the world!

  

My sister is still an active soap maker. She made these bars while I was there. One thing that's changed there in the past year is that her soaps have gotten a lot better looking. They still smell great. She assures me that they sell well to.

   

That happy meal toy was the last picture I took with that camera. I was going to get more: my sister, her family, the various things we did, but the camera just plain died. Grrrr...

  

I think the problem is a bug in the software. When I turn it on all I see is this blue screen with that message. Can't seem to figure out how to change the mode. No reset button. Even taking the battery out for a week doesn't help. Oh well.... My opinion is that Sony should have debugged it before they sold it!

  

Pat had us over one evening after that. He emailed me these pictures after I got back to California. The one of the Mauk store was inspired by some point in the discussion, when I commented about how the new name must be a product of the owner thinking big or something. He explained that the guy's name is Wall. It's an independent country store. The kind of place where you can get beer and gas on the way to somewhere else in the area.

Pat lives about half an hour on the other side of Mauk in an awesome adobe Hobbit home at the end of a winding dirt road. He took us on a tour, including the garden out back where he had an awesome variety of interesting plants growing. One of them was this burdock, which I saw him pull out of the ground. He cooked the burdock root like shoestring potatoes. It was delicious! The leaves were cooked like collard greens but not as good. Too much fiber.  The moment was particularly memorable because none of us had ever tried burdock before.