Belated Happy Birthday Post

Yesterday was my mother's 74th birthday. I took her out shopping for a new pair of slacks and got her to try on a pair of size 4 pants (she still thinks she's a size 12 after years of being the incredible shrinking woman) and I thought she looked so cute in her man-shirt and slacks. We had fun shopping and the three of us had a great meal at the Treasure Island restaurant in Moraine, one of Mom's favorites.

I know there are a lot of people out there who have lost their mothers and I am so grateful that my mom is still relatively healthy and active, because we're best friends as well as mother/daughter. Love ya, Mom!

Good Stuff Going On in Ohio

Wow! I discovered a great website called the Ohio Traveler eMagazine for finding neat places to explore in Ohio. There's a ton of stuff going on this coming weekend; the Dublin, Ohio Irish Festival (well, DUH!), the Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, OH (again with the "Duh!"), Vintage Ohio--the wine festival extraordinaire in Kirtland, Ohio (ahhh!) and so many more. Unfortunately for my wine-loving taste buds, the now annual Braun family reunion is this weekend so we'll have to take a pass on all the fun. But there is an impressive list of places to go and things to do in my home state not only in the month of August but year round.

Take a few minutes to explore the site and see what "The Heart of It All" has to offer.

Roll Out That Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Lazy Sunday

At 6AM the humidity level is 94%. It's going to be a hot one today. And while I know it's much hotter degree-wise out West, our high humidity makes it so much more miserable here, to my way of thinking.

My thoughts are of the "it's a dry heat" of Arizona this morning. The theme for this Lazy Sunday? The varying landscapes of that magnificent state.


One of our favorite places in Arizona is Sedona, a quirky little town surrounded by red rocks. This photo was taken at the Chapel of the Holy Cross.


When I was a child, one of the neighborhood kids had a piece of petrified wood which fascinated me. The best part of rv travel is seeing all those places I dreamed about as a child. Lacy Point in the Painted Desert area of the Petrified Forest National Park is one many scenic viewpoints that provide an excellent photo opportunity.


A terrific day trip is driving east from Apache Junction along Rt. 88 up to the Roosevelt Dam and on around to Rt. 60. Known as the Apache Trail, a lot of the road will be dirt and gravel and barely wide enough for two cars at time, but the vistas are incredible when you are a desert-lover.


A hidden gem in the southeastern part of Arizona is the Chiricahua National Monument. You won't find a lot of people here, but you'll find shady spots to picnic, trails to hike and fascinating rock formations.


A clay cliff in the Petrified Forest National Park. This section of the park is known as the Blue Mesa area, thanks to the bluish-gray bentonite clay that has been exposed by rain over the years.


It's a tradition for some returning winter visitors to climb Silly Mountain, located near Apache Junction, AZ. We've done it both as a hike, and to locate geocaches hidden there.


One certainly cannot forget the Grand Canyon when talking about magnificent vistas in Arizona. This photograph was taken at Mohave Point.


I had to bicycle out five miles if I wanted to make a cell phone call while staying at the Queen Valley RV Park, but the sunsets alone were worth it. This is looking west towards the Superstition Mountains.

Shake, Shake, Shake

Shake, shake shake; shake your...coyote urine?

The deer are winning. Yesterday Denny had to yank a tomato plant that was eaten to the point of total destruction. Now that we're THAT close to having red, ripe tomatoes, it's time to pull out the big guns; Shake Away Deer Repellent. We didn't find the granules at our local Ace Hardware store, but we found plastic packets that I tore open and sprinkled on the ground (Phew!) I don't know about the deer, but the smell would certainly keep me away!

The red peppers are getting huge, we're picking green peppers and the pimentos are getting sizeable also. The butter crunch lettuce is bolting in the extreme heat--it's really a spring time crop that didn't get planted soon enough. And FIL still says the tomatoes will be ripe after the full moon, but they are pretty green. We're certainly ready because BLTs just don't taste right with hothouse tomatoes.

We did get a nice break in our yard work yesterday when the oldest son of Denny's godfather stopped by with his wife to chat with us. In town for the funeral of a dear friend, and having just driven a fifth wheel from Seattle, Washington to this area in five days, we talked about rving and the lifestyle. Comparing places we've visited in Florida, Denny and I discovered his friends had stayed at some of the same campgrounds. It was nice to see Ken and Bonnie after so many years and even nicer to talk about traveling with people who loved it as much as we do. Since Denny and I are seriously considering wintering in Florida this year in case we need to handle yard and gardening chores again next year, we may be able to meet up with Ken and Bonnie down there. While strangers in a campground are simply friends you haven't yet met, it is nice to catch up to folks you really know occasionally for some reminiscing .

Goof off day today.

A Day at Holly Hills Golf Course

Too many days of driving miles and miles and miles meant that when we were able to play golf again we chose to drive about ten miles down the road to Holly Hills Golf Club in Waynesville, Ohio. I have a special affection for this course because this is where Denny dragged me along with two of his friends, rented me a set of men's right-handed golf clubs (I'm a left-handed gal), stuck a ball on a tee on the tenth hole and said "hit it". And that was my introduction to golf.

Set in the countryside among low, rolling hills with many mature trees, Holly Hills is walkable if you are in good shape and very playable no matter what your skill level. Blue tees set the course at 6785 yards, white at 6634 yards and red tees make it 5892 yards. There are sand traps, a creek that crosses a couple of fairways (as in the picture above of the 13th hole, a par 3 with a remodeled stone wall and walking bridge that never fails to intimidate me), trees and areas of links-style rough. For the amount of play the course receives, the staff keeps it in very good condition.

Holly Hills is located at 4966 N. State Route 42, Waynesville, OH Phone (513) 897-4921. Seniors pay $21 for eighteen holes with a riding cart, one of the best deals in town. I believe the regular price is $30 weekdays with a cart and $35 on weekends.

P.S. Happy Anniversary, Denny. I'm glad you refused to take "no" for an answer those many years ago.


The view from the eighth hole at Holly Hills.

Close Encounters of a Deer Kind

I almost passed on my evening walk with Patches. Denny and I played golf today and I was tired and stiff. However, Patches doesn't understand tired, so we left for our walk, leaving my camera behind. My mistake.

After wandering around the storage area and checking on the magic lily, we headed down into the dry creek, checking out Patches' favorite spot under the tree roots. As we headed upstream I was watching for spider webs blocking my path, as now I try to avoid them rather than breaking through them as I have in the past. Near a slight bend in the creek bed Ipaused while Patches did her nightly walk along the fallen tree and investigated all the wonderful smells around the old tree. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a slight movement about 100 feet up the creek bed and peered through the branches to see a doe watching us. Her white tail flipped furiously as she tried to see what manner of creature Patches was, and what I was going to do. I'm sure my
homemade insect repellent made of Avon's Skin So Soft oil and water confused her and we stood and stared at each other for a good five minutes. The doe wanted so desperately to check the nearby storm drain for water but Patches and I were too near for comfort. Finally the doe jumped up the bank and off into the woods and Patches and I continued to wander her way, figuring the deer was long gone.

As we got to another of Patches' stops, a burrow near the edge of the bank that is
open to the air from the erosion of the creek sides, I again caught a movement in the woods. The doe was back watching us and this time she stamped her right foreleg on the ground as if to intimidate us into leaving the area. When that didn't work, she made the strangest huffing/trumpeting noise through her noise and stamped her leg again. When three more trumpets and more stamping didn't frighten us away, the
doe bounded off deeper into the woods.

Returning home I told Denny about our experience and he said that chances were good that the doe had a pair of fawns with her in the woods (after the first year of
a single birth does then birth twins thereafter) and she was trying to scare Patches and I away from there. Wow, that would have been terrific and I would have been even more upset that I had left the camera behind. No more. That camera goes with me everywhere I go!

It's Still Us

Yep, there's a different look to the RV Vagabonds. I'm updating the template to Bl*ggers new "layout" form, so I've lost a lot of elements on the sidebar. I'll be working on that as soon as I figure out what the heck I'm doing. Or I give up and go back to the peaceful, blue looking-out-the-window template.

Anyone know how to make the header picture smaller? Perhaps a nice, narrow rectangle? Help!

Lazy Sunday This and That

Today our son Darby and his wife Net are coming to visit, so the morning will be busy with food preparation and pie-making. I prepare the food, Denny makes the pie. Patches will hide because she knows that something is going on, even if she doesn't know what it is.

Our week was busy since we were helping my mother set up and run the estate sale she had contracted for, along with some garden maintenanceinCinci (the deer are ahead 2 to 0). Denny had to move the perimeter fencing around the garden closer to the plants and I placed the bags of mothballs on the fencing rather than the individual tomato stakes. The rain and sprinkler system are melting the mothballs, so the deer ate the tops off all twelve plants this week, destroying nine ripening tomatoes and two green peppers. We're hoping that by moving the bags of mothballs to the fence that the water from the sprinkler won't hit the mothballs and
melt them so quickly.

My picture taking opportunities were limited this week and the pictures I tried to take didn't come out. It quickly became obvious to me that taking pictures of
spiders,caterpillars and spider webs require special lens and expertise to come out
properly. My camera just couldn't decide where to focus and since I have a cat dragging me at one end of a leash I don't have time to figure out a manual focus/aperture/speed thingy. Therefore you'll have to use your imagination to picture emerald green spiders, the sunlight making sun catchers out of spider webs and small, fuzzy white caterpillars climbing silken threads from the ground thirty feet
up into a black walnut tree. I truly wish that picture had come out.


Our attempt at deterring the deer. Pretty, but ineffective when the rains melt the mothballs inside the blue net bags.


My father-in-law said that it couldn't be deer eating the plants--here's the evidence.


Okay, this was going to be a really cool picture of
caterpillars crawling up webs strung from the ground into this tall
black walnut tree. Bright sky combined with leaves combined with tiny
caterpillars equals poor picture. The white fuzzy things are the caterpillars.


This is a picture of the very rare clearus dayus in Ohious. Low humidity, no haze, temperatures in the high 70s. Perfect.


I have to admit, after attempting to photograph spiders and their webs under poor lighting conditions while in a creek bed, I have all sorts of admiration for nature photographers. Because you have to have skill and good equipment and a lot of patience, as well as not having a cat tugging at the end of a leash.


This is what my mother always called a magic lily. It definitely should be called a magic lily here because of where it is growing...



...which is in the "back 40" of the campground where a decrepit old trailer is being stored. This single lonely lily is making a brave attempt to brighten up the surrounding weeds and rusting hulk of a trailer.


Last, but not least, for Kim and Luna--a Patches picture.

You and Me and Rain on the Roof

Since the forecast is for rain off and on all day, Denny and I are just doing piddly little things around the rig. The estate sale is over and the packing up for charity has to wait until the family removes whatever remaining property they want to keep. So my mom has given us a couple of days off--yay!

Denny's evening down-time is watching the Cincinnati Reds ball games while mine has been my evening perambulations with Patches.Hmm, that could be a whole 'nother series of blogs in itself--"Perambulations with Patches", like "Travels with Charley". Nah, that's been done.

I should have taken my camera on our walk the other night. While wandering the creek bed with the setting sun finding holes in the tree cover, the sunlight suddenly highlighted the work-in-progress of what I believe might have been a mangora gibberosa. This lovely creature (I know, I know, how can a spider be lovely?) was a brilliant emerald green in the light, with a bright yellow marking on her belly that glowed metallic gold. Patches was preoccupied with the scent of something-or-other, so I had the opportunity to watch the engineering marvel of web-building in progress. Each sticky silk thread of the circle was placed precisely 1/8 of an inch from the last, strung between cross-members that were also equidistant from each other. I watched in amazement as this small orb-weaver circled quickly around and around, building her trap in an elegant warp and weave movement that sparkled and bounced with her motions. The five inch in diameter web itself was suspended between two tree branches that were two feet apart, held by long spider guy wires.

Patches was ready to move along, so I made a mental note of the location of the spider web to be able to check on it the next day. Of course, after twenty-four hours,the web had served its purposed and the spider had obviously snagged a
couple meals because the web itself was mangled in several spots. By the third day, the web was looking pretty ratty. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before the spider creates another web to start the process again.

By now, some of you are probably feeling a little buggy and itchy, right? But when the sun shines through the trees and I see a spider web fifty feet up in the air, stretched between branches twelve feet apart and glowing with theiridescence of
fine crystal, I can't help but admire not only the beauty of what a spider has created but marvel at how he got from there-to-there to get that web up there in the sky.

Yeah, I guess I'm weird.

Mmm, summer

Baco, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Fresh corn on the cob dripping with butter. Watermelon. It's summer in Ohio.

The mothball idea worked well at deterring the deer, but we discovered that rain and the sprinkler system melts the moth balls, so those had to be replaced. Denny's sister had put a net bag of moth balls on each tomato stake, so we're thinking that perhaps they should be moved to the string fence that surrounds the garden instead, as the sprinkler system wouldn't wet them then.

FIL says that after the full moon (the 29th) the tomatoes will ripen "just like that". We're ready.

Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to the estate sale we go....

No Rest on a Lazy Sunday

This morning Denny and I are taking my mother out to breakfast and then we'll all trek over to the estate sale for final price marking and a "walk through" to make sure every item is priced and in its place. The actual sale will be on Tuesday and Wednesday and those will be two long days for all three of us. Patches now hides in protest when she sees us start gathering our things preparing to leave in the morning--all this activity and work is a big change for all of us.

Because my mind is jumping around trying to remember if we've done all we should for the sale, I've gathered a hodgepodge of pictures. In no discernable order and for no rhyme or reason other than they struck my eye at the moment, here you have today's Lazy Sunday pix:


It is very difficult to get a picture of any of the upper, middle or lower waterfalls at Gooseberry State Park in Minnesota due to the popularity of the park. You are allowed to wade and climb around all three and the public takes full advantage of that fact.


There are two sets of waterfalls in the Pattison State Park in Wisconsin, the 165 foot Big Manitou Falls and this, the 31 foot Little Manitou Falls. Denny and I were able to spend an hour here and only see about three other people during that time.


The chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy is an impressive piece of architecture. The inside is even more striking. You are allowed to tour some of the grounds, but after the events in the fall of 2001 much of the area is restricted.


Early man's architecture; much different than that of the Air Force Chapel yet no less impressive for the effort it took to build this 320 foot wall of buildings back in 1100AD. These are the Aztec ruins at the Aztec Ruins National Monument near Farmington, New Mexico.


While not as big as the Grand Canyon, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison is still an impressive place to visit. We spent an entire day wandering this lovely national park.


We're having a spectacular sunrise this morning but I'm still in my pajamas so there's no picture of that today. Instead, I'll wrap this up with a sunset from my favorite campground in Gold Canyon, Arizona.

Too Much Like Work

Whew! I don't know how folks work a regular 9 to 5 job all the time--that's too much like work! For this past week Denny and I have been leaving the house at 8AM and not returning until late afternoon. The bad part is--we're not getting paid for this!

Since Monday I have been working side by side with my mother and my uncle at the estate sale. Denny and my aunt have helped two of the last four days and that has made the set up go much faster. I think we can finish getting all the rooms ready today and we'll have the sale next Tuesday and Wednesday with the clean up and charity pick up set for either Thursday or the following Monday. Then Denny and I should have a breather for a while.

In between trips to Kettering, we're still going down to Cinci for garden maintenance. The deer have destroyed one tomato plant so our next move is to place mothballs in nylon net bags on each tomato stake in an effort to save the remaining eleven plants. The plants that are left are heavy with fruit so we should have a good crop if we can ward off the deer. Denny's sister Connie volunteered to handle the moth ball chore to save us an additional 100 mile round trip this week, which we appreciated. Gas prices jumped 30 cents in one day this week, although diesel prices are still hovering around $2.79.

Life had been chugging along pretty smoothly this week until we discovered a big pool of radiator coolant under the truck Thursday night after we finished eating dinner at the Der Dutchman in Waynesville. We're hoping the leak is simply a bad hose and not a bad radiator, but in the meantime, we've taken the truck to a Ford dealer and have rented a little Ford Focus for the duration. We were due to have the fluid in the rear differential changed anyway, so this unexpected repair means we'll have some regular maintenance work done also. You have to look at these things positively, right?

And the beat goes on...

Busy, Busy

It will be quiet here at RV Vagabonds for a couple more days; my mother contracted to handle another estate sale last week. Her business partner is tied up with family "stuff" so Denny and I and my aunt and uncle are filling in for this one.

I have to say, going through another person's accumulations really makes you think about all the belongings and memorabilia that we hang onto. In this particular
household, the man of the house catalogued everything he owned or did.
He created fat notebooks full of favorite cartoons, vacation brochures,household appliance manuals, Glenn Miller articles, fishing articles,to the tune of 12 large garbage bags full. That's right, garbage bags, because the family doesn't want the stuff and neither will anyone else. A lifetime of carefully catalogued, filed, annotated notebooks and file cabinets stuffed full is going in the trash because it means nothing to anyone other than the person who created it.

How many people have collected items; elephants, art glass, fishing gear, you-name-it
that their kids will later look at and go "psshh, what would I do with that?" Very few people have the same passions as their parents when it comes to collecting it seems.

I have to say, at this stage of our lives, our two sons won't have to deal with too much of that; there's not a whole lot of "stuff" that can go into 400 square feet of space and the small pile of boxes in storage in my mother's basement would take about a half hour to go through since our personal memorabilia has been winnowed down to two 14 inch by 14 inch boxes. And this summer I'll probably go through the pile again
and put some of the remaining things in the other boxes onebay.

Because I don't want some stranger to go through my things and think, "how sad".

Hot Lazy Sunday

The forecast for today is for temperatures in the mid 90s. The jet stream has created a swatch of blazing heat across the country and you'd have to travel to the western edge of Washington to find cooler temperatures this week. So today we're traveling to Washington and other areas via pictures of cool water.


A sea of daisies fronts Lake Crescent, located in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. There are so many wonderful parks with walking trails in this area you could never walk them all.


A view of the Old Santee Canal in South Carolina. Once an important method of transporting goods across the south, the canal was made obsolete by railroads.


Beautiful red rocks and sand near the reservoir of Quail Lakes State Park near Hurricane, Utah. The sunsets here highlight and intensify the color.


We discovered this waterfall in the Red Cliffs Recreation area while geocaching. Part of the reason I enjoy the hobby of geocaching so much is that you find these gems that you'd never see from your car.


Dusk at Quail Lakes State Park near Hurricane, Utah. There is a nice area for camping in the park, although we were staying at a member park nearby.


Weeping Rock at Zion National Park. You walk a short, steep path to get here and you can stand under the falling water while you enjoy the tap dance of the water hitting the rock floor in front of you.


The area of La Pine, Oregon is blessed with several lakes and the Newberry National Volcanic Monument with its huge flows of obsidian. Paulina Lake is part of the National Monument area which sits in stark contrast to the rocky black obsidian obilisks.

Training a Cat

Denny's sister Connie drove up from Cincinnati today to pick up the tart cherries we had ordered for her from Jackson's Farm Market. The fine folks at Jackson's orders them from a grower in Michigan, and they arrive already pitted and frozen in ten pound buckets, which is enough cherries for five cherry pies or ten cherry-rhubarb pies. Yum. Not having to pick and pit the cherries is a bonus--believe me, Denny and I did that for years and we don't miss it.

Anyway, as we were sitting around enjoying brats and metts cooked on the grill with fresh corn on the cob, we started discussing cats and teaching them to walk on a leash. I have been asked several times by cat owners at various campgrounds how I taught Patches to walk on a leash, so I figured it was about time to explain my method.

1. Put the harness on the cat and attach the leash or retractable leash to the harness. Open the door to your house/rig and allow the cat outside.

2. Run to catch cat after the cat realizes she has on a harness/leash contraption and she does a quick five-step backwards movement, shrugs her shoulders and gets out of the harness.

3. Put the harness and leash back on the cat, stepping quickly to the side and pulling upwards on the leash when the cat does her five-step-backward/shrug so she is unable to slip the leash. Give cat an evil grin for out-thinking her this time.

4. Stand in one place for ten minutes while the cat sits with her back to you pouting.

5. The cat is now ready to meander. Note, I did not say walk. You do not walk a cat. The cat meanders and you follow. This is the most important lesson in "walking a cat on a leash". The only way to prevent the five-step backward/shrug routine from this point on is to allow the cat to move when and where she wants to move. You will quickly learn that cats do not walk in a straight line and frequent stops to lay down and survey their kingdom are a necessary part of the cat walking routine. The ability to knit and walk at the same time would be a good option for cat owners at this point. Making personal phone calls on your cell phone is another good option for those of us who can't knit. Because you will get bored out of your mind some days when you've been gone all day and the cat wants to sniff and explore everything to punish you for leaving her alone ALL DAY LONG WITHOUT ANYONE TO PLAY WITH!

Okay, so it's not that bad once your cat gets used to the idea of being attached to you and under your control (ya see, THAT'S the part they hate!). Yesterday Patches and I startled a deer in the woods beside our creek, and I've had the opportunity to see the tiny toads she chases as well as the irridescent dragonflies, the mud-dauber wasps, various size and shapes and colors of moths that fly just out of her reach as well as observe the variety of plant life along the banks of the creek here. Because of our evening perambulations I've glimped the orange of orioles, the cool blue of jays, the scarlet flash of the cardinals set against the cool green of the leaves of walnut, ash and sycamore trees. Chickadees warn each other of our advance along the trail and lightning bugs waver at knee-height, preparing for their nightime dance of light.

I may have taught the cat to walk on a leash, but she re-taught me to see.

Repercussions

Denny just received an odd telephone call. A man just called from a telephone order center (you could hear many voices in the background) thanking Denny for his order of "sexual enhancement products" and asking him if he was satisfied with his order. Huh?

Not only did Denny NOT order anything like that, the order was placed using that credit card we canceled after someone tried to wire-transfer money out of Las Vegas on our account a couple of months ago. The scary thing is, the man on the phone read off our actual billing address and was calling us on our cell phone which is a number we don't give out to just anyone. Denny is not concerned, since the credit card is no longer good, but I wonder if they are good enough to find our address and cell phone number, can they find our new credit card number?

So once again I've notified Experian and put a fraud alert on our account. They pass it on to the other two major credit reporting agencies for you, which is nice.

Have you asked for your free credit report lately? This central site allows you to request a free credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Take a moment to make sure you haven't been victimized by identify theft.

Golf at Green Crest

Driving down I-75 towards towards the little burg of Bethany Denny and I realized it had been over nine years since we had played golf at the Green Crest Golf Course. Even though it was a 45 minute drive from our home in Beavercreek, we always liked to play this course because it was a nice course to walk (yes, once upon a time we did walk when we played golf) and the course was never crowded during the middle of the week.

We chose to play here again because Green Crest has a special price of $25 to play eighteen holes with a riding cart on Mondays before 2PM. We discovered that there were a whole lot of other people who knew about the Monday special and settled in for a long day of golf.

Fortunately, on the second hole we were invited to join up with Elaine and Mike, a couple from Monroe, Ohio and that made the wait on every hole more pleasant. Waiting with us at times was a young man from Oakwood, Ohio who was on the high school golf team and was playing by himself. He had one of the newest Nike drivers and could hit that ball a mile. Of course, he was bored to death by the slow play and he welcomed the chance to chat to kill time and proved himself to be extremely personable. All in all, it was a very pleasant day for us and we even managed to hit a few good shots (I was even applauded by a twosome on another hole when I managed a nice chip shot onto the green that ended up three feet from the hole) so we walked off the course ready to play again. Which is not always the case with us. Heh.

Green Crest Golf Course is located at 7813 Bethany Rd., Bethany, OH. Phone (513)777-2090. Regular green fees during the week are $37 for 18 holes with a cart, and seniors pay $26 during the week. Weekend rates are $39. The fairways are tree lined, there are some sloping greens that are tricky and the sand in the traps is fluffy so there are enough challenges to make this course interesting, whatever your level of play. The tees are at 6230 feet, 5984 feet and 4884 feet, so it's not the longest course out there, but you have to be able to hit the ball straight to stay out of trouble. The RV Vagabonds recommend this one.

Lazy Sunday Scenes from Frontier Campground

Sunday is truly a lazy day for me. Ever since Mother's Day two years ago, Denny decreed that on Sundays I don't have to cook. He takes me out to breakfast, cooks me real popcorn for an afternoon snack and then heats up leftovers for dinner, or takes me out again. I get to play on the computer or read or watch golf since we turn the campground over to the weekenders and simply hang around our place on Sundays. So today's pictures are about where we're hanging this summer.


The main area of the campground is shaded by lovely tall ash, black walnut and sycamore trees. In the "back forty" where we are, there are trees behind us and across the driveway from us, but our fifth wheel is in the sun so we would be able to get a satellite signal for our TVs and Internet access. It's not as pretty, but it works for us.


The campground offers these rustic little rental cabins for overnight and weekend stays. They are basically just sleeping cabins, but each weekend they are filled.


This was what we saw beside us for almost four weeks, but it was towed out on Friday. The owners here are still working hard on clearing out some old permanent trailers and making this more of a campground and less of a trailer park.


The lack of rain before this week really stressed the trees as you can see by this branch starting to change color already. We never did get a really good soaking rain last week, but we got enough that the corn in the neighboring fields shot up a good two feet and it is now taller than me.



Can you see the cow in the exposed roots of this tree that hangs above the dry creek bed that Patches and I wander every afternoon?


Finally, here are the chairs I got from the estate sale. It's not hard to tell which chair was left exposed to the elements by its previous owner, right?