At home in Clarinda -- cool weather for now

 73 degrees here in Clarinda, IA at 12 Noon Thursday -- predicted high of 79, pleasant day.   No AC running, window exhaust fan doing fine.  Forecast calls for hot weather towards the end of next week, but cool weather until then.

        We arrived home yesterday about 6:30 pm, driving the 500 miles from Cape Girardeau, stopping at the Clarinda city's dump station to empty our trailer tanks before.  Were gone 12 days, drove 1,185 miles, listened to a lot of good music at Starvy Creek near Conway, Missouri, visited a friend in Springfield, MO and got to spend several days with my brother Don & his wife Vicki in Cape Girardeau.

Above photo and at right at supper with Don & Vicki at Chateau Girardeau Assisted Living dining room.

We had gone to a church
service there in Chateau with
Don & Vicki Tuesday afternoon.

After eating supper with them we played "Left, Right, Center" dice game and then one game of dominoes before bidding them goodby.  Wish we could see them more often.  May be able to visit them in September.

After doing some of the above blog I took a break and ate lunch then did some yard work.

Have to show this photo at right taken out the door of our trailer at the RV Park we were parked in Cape Girardeau.  This is looking toward the office on the hill.  There were twice as many empty spaces behind us on this same line - probably 25 empty spaces.  When we came back for a bit Tuesday afternoon I parked the pick up in the space right beside us.  I immediately got a call from the office that unless I moved the pickup I would be charged a day's rate for that extra lot--nearly $50.  I moved the pickup, but am still miffed.

This unusual clock, at left, was on the desk where we checked in at the facility where Don & Vicki live -- Chateau Girardeau -- has plastic pages that has hour on left and it clicks over on the hour to show that time.  And, on the right the page clicks over each minute.

We were gone nearly two weeks during which there was a lot of rain and heat.  As soon as I got unhooked from the trailer, while Phyllis was hauling things into the house, I jumped on the mower and mowed the yard. With the plentiful fertilizer applied this year and all that rain, the grass was almost knee high (well, at least to a short person) I could have used a swather and baled up some hay, if I had the equipment.

It is a little hard to see with the shadows in this picture, but sometime in the time of 2014 to 2017 when we were visiting Phyllis' sister Beth in Colorado I dug up three small Yew evergreen plants, put them in coffee cans and brought them to our place in Clarinda.  Planted them all, but only this one survived, behind the hedge in our back yard, under a lot of trees.  Has not done well and I decided to move it to more sunny place.

I planted it in front of the driveway to the shop beside the one spirea type bush I didn't cut down several years ago.  Hope can keep it watered enough to offset the heat for the next few weeks.

With this cool weather we ate lunch on the deck at noon.

Back to normal here at home for a while.  Will head out with the trailer in a couple weeks for the summer Kenwood RV Park Rally in State Center, IA and then a visit with our kids in Marengo.

LCM