It was cold in Bentley when I woke up this morning around 5, but I keep reminding myself - it's May. The weather will improve, and before long we'll be HOT! Fortunately we had a wonderful, beautiful day with a cool breeze while in the sun. Not too hot, not too cold, it was just right!
While we should probably walk on Saturdays and Sundays, we usually do not, and that was the case today. However, it seems like we both always get some type of exercise throughout the day just doing our daily chores.
Dean was watching a movie on the Hallmark Channel this morning. After I made our shakes, I became interested in it. I couldn't leave it until the end. I love Hallmark movies. They are just so heartwarming and this one really was. It was after 10:00 before our day got started!
Dean emptied our tanks this morning - we can easily go a week before emptying them. We could go a few more days if we were more careful in our use of water. While we are here at the park with full hookups we spoil ourselves.
After he finished that task, he headed to the lot. He plans to work around the pine tree closest to the road. What a tangled mess it is, but he is diligently working to clean it up. Another tree has grown up through the pine tree. It is almost as tall as the pine tree itself with ugly looking branches sticking out all around it. That will eventually be taken down along with the lower limbs of the pine tree.
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| See that crooked trunk - the tree has grown up inside the pine tree. It is all going to look so much better soon! |
He's already sprayed the grass and small trees around the bottom of the tree. Someone had thrown old wood under it and it had rotted. Of course everything stays wet there. One of the first things he did was to spray all of the underbrush to kill the ants, termites, and mosquitoes that were there. I'm glad he's done this work while it has been cooler as it would be miserable during the heat. This pandemic, as frustrating as it has been at times, has also given us the time needed to get this work done before these pests were in full force.
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| 5 orioles in this picture - 1 inside the feeder, 1 to the left as he files away, one on top, and two on the wire hangar. They were thick in the trees this afternoon. I have no idea how many there were. We also saw a beautiful red bird and a blue jay, but they were too fast to get their pictures. |
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| Dean cleaning the truck for a special event tomorrow. We'll share more about it in the next post. |
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| These irises are so pretty. |
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| I broke off several old flowers and there are still at least 10 or more to bloom yet. |
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| A few more orioles. |
After he left I straightened things up in Bentley, then headed to the Dollar General across the road from the RV Park. I needed to get a few more cards. I didn't have enough money with me yesterday to get everything I needed because I forgot to grab my purse. I typically just carry my phone case that has room for my driver's license, credit and debit cards, plus a little pocket under the cards to carry a blank check, or a few dollars. Unfortunately, I didn't have any "dollars" left as I had forgotten to "refill" it, and I didn't buy enough to use a check, which I also had used and not replaced. Guess what I've done since then? I am prepared now!
I returned home to fix lunch. We both really like chicken salad. Since my avocados ripened, I decided to have a chicken salad salad. Yes on lettuce. On our first trip to Mission, TX my Heartland lady friends invited me to have lunch with them at a Tea Room. They served their chicken and tuna salads inside of an avocado. I really liked it, and I also enjoy it on a bed of lettuce. Since I had a little leftover lettuce from the taco salads, I split it between us, sliced an avocado, then laid it on top of the lettuce, giving us both a big dollop of chicken salad. Yum! It's something different.
After lunch, we both went back to the lot. We talked and talked about the best site to build, walked off the site, then looked at other areas where more land could be cleaned up for more yard space. Wow, there is so much to think about and consider, but we have plenty of time. It will be 2023 at least before we begin that process. We still have a lot of traveling we want to do, and I hope we are able to. Of course, even after we build, we will continue to travel, but probably not as much. Over the last few days I set down with my log book and made a spreadsheet to see exactly how many traveling days we have had outside of Oswego in Bentley since we purchased him in February 2014. It was interesting.
Years and the number of days we have traveled in Bentley.
2014 - 81 days; 2015 - 122; 2016-147; 2017-151; Full-time 2018-244; 2019-208. Considering Dean had two surgeries in 2018 that kept us from traveling for about 45 days; and we were held up for approximately 45 days in 2019 with our disc brakes, we still traveled a good part of the past two years while full-timing. It has been great and we look forward to more travels, assuming things will get back to some kind of normal in the near future.
We plan to do some traveling here in Kansas around mid-May for two to three weeks, seeing things around the state we've always wanted to but just haven't taken the time. It's a shame not to travel more of our own state where we've lived all our lives. It's time to make it happen. While we've been to many Kansas cities, there are many more we want to see. We are still planning to make the trek east in June or July to see son Matt and family.
When Dean returned from the lot, we decided to order food from MJ's in Altamont. We ordered chicken strips with homemade fries, and drinks. When we picked them up, Dean suggested we drive to Big Hill Lake for something to do. It was shortly after 5 when I called the order in. When we arrived we noticed their dining room was now open, but we just chose to pick up our food at the window. It was a beautiful day. I have two cousins who live in the Mound Valley area, which is very near the lake. During Dean's working days this was an area he covered with the telephone company, so he knows where most people live. He took me by both Kim and Nancy's places. So if either of you read this post, we said hello and waved as we drove by. Big Hill Lake is a Corps of Engineers park.
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| Pearson-Skubitz Big Hill Lake |
Dean was interested to see if the RV Parks were open. They were not, however there were a number of boats on the water fishing today. The side of the lake closest to Cherryvale, KS has a road that takes you to the park with an overlook, shelters and a fishing berm. These were all open and busy. It looked like it was mostly fishing in a pond not from the lookout, but those fishing seemed to be "social distancing". I took a few pictures along the way.
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| This armadillo was running as fast as he could to get away from us. |
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| Welcome sign and "Home of James Wesley", Country Music Singer |
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| Mound Valley is known for their large US Flag in the middle of the main intersection in town. Often directions are given "from the flag pole, go 2 blocks east, etc." |
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| Old Mound Valley Jail - it's really neat they have preserved this old building. |
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| As we made our way back to Oswego shortly before 7. Clear skies before the rain tomorrow. |
As we were nearing Oswego, my phone had a funny ring to it. When I looked it was Dean's brother Larry. We forgot about the Facebook Messenger get together that his siblings are doing at 7 on Saturday evenings. I joined the group and we visited as we drove the last few miles to Oswego. I told them we would call them back using the computer. It was a nice visit with Larry and Joyce. After we hung up I worked on Friday's blog post before we went to bed. I will be glad to finish this and post it this morning (Sunday).
(Well, posting Sunday morning did not happen as the day filled up very quickly. For some reason my pictures would not upload to Google photos so I had to let it go until later. Hopefully it was just a fluke and not an ongoing issue.)
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