What a weird time to be alive. I braved our local Walmart last week to try and load up on supplies for several weeks worth of shelf-stable meals. I haven't been inside a grocery store for a long time because it's just so much easier to order online for a free grocery pick-up. Unfortunately, that wasn't a possibility since they're backed up on pick-up orders for the foreseeable future. They were pretty well stocked on dairy (including milk and eggs), but completely out of chicken, and the canned goods section was pretty picked over. Produce was decently stocked, but they were out of the basics like potatoes and onions. Fortunately, I was still able to get about 2/3 of the things on my list, and find decent substitutions for a lot of the rest of it. Brought me back to our Grenada days when you could count on the store being out of at least a few of the things on your grocery list every time.
COVID-19 just hit Casper a couple days ago. There have only been one or two cases so far. Jared was put in charge of coming up with a protocol plan for diagnosing it by meeting patients at their cars from their clinic parking lot. Today he'll present the plan to several attending physicians. Normally one of them would've taken on this project, but they're all so busy right now and being swamped with email and phone calls, so they asked Jared to take it since he's on a less busy rotation. He likes doing stuff like this. Anyway, we're all healthy and happy so far. I'm sure we'll all catch it eventually since Jared's job is to be right in the thick of it, but I'm not too worried. Hopefully we can hold out until Easter. We're really looking forward to being with family on Easter and to Jared having an interview in Cedar City that weekend.
On Saturday we drove an hour to Douglas, WY. I was feeling insanely stir crazy from being cooped up all week with Jack, and I'd heard about a short trail in Douglas that sounded like a good hike for a toddler. It ended up being kind of an underwhelming little hike on the Bearcat trail, but it was really good to get outside and do something new anyway.
After our hike we got a happy meal and some spicy chicken sandwiches at a McDonalds drive thru and then wound our way around Douglas to see what it's like there. It's a pretty small town of 6000 people. There's not a lot going on, but the North Platte River runs through it (like Casper), and there are actually some beautiful neighborhoods with nice houses. Jack was very tired on our drive home and took an enormous nap once we made it back. It was a nice little adventure.