I tried to dress Asher up in a pumpkin dog costume Janet gave us for Turbo a few years ago, and he attacked it, so I went to plan B and dressed him up as Raven from Minnesota Bound. Spittin' image, isn't he? 
But this summer I've been working on one of my life goals too... to visit each one of the Zorbaz locations. ;) Yeah, pretty lofty goal, I know.
So far I have dined at four of them: Detroit Lakes, Ottertail, Pelican Lake and Gull Lake. I also got a really groovy Zorbaz sweatshirt for my birthday, which I wear with pride. I have also brought numerous people to this fine restaurant for their first time. Man, I should be getting kick-backs for all the love I'm spreading for this place. 
Saturday morning we boarded the dogs for the first time ever and headed down to Sioux Falls, SD to visit Lynn and Rusty at their (relatively) new home. Brian and Adam rode down with us, and we met Megan and Bud and Bronson there. We had fun eating and bowling and sitting around a campfire. Here are some pics from bowling. The close-up shots were taken by Bronson with a little bit of Josh's help. ;)
This is just down our street... we didn't get real close but you can see a large temporary barrier they put up around the riverfront homes, so if the river were to raise up to their level and get past the sandbag dikes, it would not spill out into the rest of the neighborhood. We also live just a block down from the County, and they had made about a 3 ft tall earthen dike around their whole building. We went in to Fargo to check out the scene, and here is a view on the only open part of 2nd St. Just past this Nat'l Guard truck and barrier is a gigantic earthen dike built by the city to protect all of downtown Fargo.
We went over the Main Ave bridge, the only one open save I94, and there was a huge crowd of people gathered around to see the view.
As you can probably tell, these are all pictures taken from the car. Here is a photo of a train going over the bridge next to the Main Ave bridge. The water almost touches the tracks. When it is dry, there is a road that goes below these bridges, so you can get some idea of how high this water really is.
The water is slowly going down. It is finally below 1997's record level. Unfortunately, a blizzard has begun and we are looking at another possible 10 inches of new snow tonight and tomorrow. This makes for very bad conditions in trying to monitor the dikes and get around town. Snowplowing is at a bare minimum, so streets are terrible. There is a good chance I'll be working from home tomorrow.
