Sunday, 5-18-97

Since we were up so late last night, we really took a long time to get around this morning. It was about 11:30 in the morning before we were ready to start our day. I read the Sunday newspaper and checked out the local real estate prices. I wish I could take a nice house from Wichita and drop it on a lot in California. Donna took us out for lunch. The restaurant had weird selections on the menu. I had something called a "Scotch Egg." This item falls in the category of "Guilty Pleasures." I then had a big plate of crawdads. I asked for a copy of the menu to bring home with me.

After lunch, I tried to wash off some of the bugs on the front of the motorhome. We apparently had driven through a cloud of gnats. There we hundreds of little gnat bodies with wings stuck to every forward facing surface of the motorhome. Terry helped to get the bug bodies and goo off cab-over section. I was able to get the windshield clean except for a couple of remaining gnat bodies. When I tried to clean them off, I found they really were little chips in the windshield with small cracks that looked like gnat wings. I found a third chip as well. They must have been put there when an empty gravel truck passed us and cut close in front of the motorhome. Before I could slow down enough to get some distance away from the truck, I heard sounds of small objects hitting the motorhome. I thought we were lucky and escaped damage, but because of all the bug juice on the windshield, I wasn't able to see the new chips in the windshield.

Terry and his bird Mo

Terry left for his home in the afternoon. He will be back next weekend in time to see us off on our trip home. Just before he left, he let his bird out of its cage for a short time. The bird rides on Terry’s shoulder most of the time, but when Terry tries to put the bird back in his cage, it will climb around and hang on Terry’s back just out of reach. Other times the bird will climb up on Terry’s head or roost on the bill of Terry’s baseball cap. I took some pictures of just such an occurrence.

Kay and I took Steven over to Lois and George’s place for an afternoon of crafts. I picked up my mother and brought her over to participate in the fun. Kay, her mother, my mother, and Steven put together some pretty fancy refrigerator magnets. They used things like sea shells and small pieces of drift wood for the base material. This looks as if it would be a fun activity for one of our RV club outings. While all this was going on, Kay’s father and I watched Tiger Woods playing golf on TV. While we were watching TV, a storm warning scrolled across the bottom of the screen. We decided to head for home to make sure all the motorhome windows and vents were closed.

Sunset as seen from Jim’s and Donna’s front yard

The sun went down shortly after arriving back at our motorhome. Donna, Kay, Steven, and I set up lawn chairs in the driveway to watch the coming show. We saw a pretty good display of nature's fireworks. I saw several multistroke lightning bolts that spanned from one side of the sky to the other. The thunder was fun the hear. The storm has passed, but we are going to bed with another storm due to arrive during the night.

Because tornadoes had been sighted with the coming storm front, I lowered all the antennas on the motorhome and disconnected from shore power. This was in preparation for us to flee to a safer area if necessary. Hailstones from the size of golfballs up to the to size baseballs were also predicted, so we wanted to be able to get the motorhome under a nearby highway overpass if needed.