I enjoyed work today.

But don't tell anyone!

After all the complaining and moaning and groaning I've done I'm loathe to admit it, but today was fun.  Today was the first day I drove a for-real rural route.  My regular route, and the other one I'm trained on are called rural routes but they are in new subdivisions (that most certainly were farmland not that long ago).  I drive from neighborhood mail box unit to neighborhood mail box unit.  Because the Post Office likes to have  all their substitute carriers cross-trained on all the routes I was forced into training and delivering on this route this week, Taking a third of it each day.  This route is 28 miles long.  The first two days I was delivering in subdivisions but today I took to the open countryside.

The weather wasn't REALLY nice today but the rain held off and I got to take a drive in the country.  I delivered mail to dairy farms and blueberry farms and assorted other farms.  I even delivered mail to my own house!  I saw horses and sheep and cows.  Lots of cows.  I saw one cow licking it's newborn calf.  I had to stop the mail truck and admire the spectacle.  I talked to the cows and horses too ~ but they didn't talk back.  Too bad, I bet they'd have fascinating stories to tell.

For those of you who don't know how close to the border I really am.  I delivered mail to this mail box today:

The road on the right is in Canada, the one on the left is in the US.  Only a ditch separates the two.  Don't get any ideas though - there are cameras all up and down this stretch of the border to keep out those pesky aliens!  I even delivered to the border crossing station.  They certainly seem to be more pleasant to the mail carrier than they are to travelers...

The one bad part about this route is that a portion of the rural part is on a busy highway with speeds around 50 miles an hour.  It is two lanes and has no shoulders, with ditches next to the highway.  One wrong move and... SPLASH!    It was a little nerve wracking to be stopping to deliver mail along that stretch.  There was no way possible to completely get off the road.  I just kept hoping people were paying attention to the little mail truck with flashing strobe lights.