I made it!  I'm on vacation!  We even left a little early.  We are spending the first weekend with my mother- and father-in-law.  Everybody is busy doing something else and I'm in our camper working on this.  I will put it online before we leave here to move on towards Colorado.I might even get next week's Bible study online while on vacation.  We'll see!

I only forgot a few things.  I really wasn't able to sit and study my packing list in peace and quiet and forgot to write some things on it.  That's OK, it's nothing major.  I've already gone shopping and bought some new sandals.  All I brought was one pair of shoes.  Where was my head?  Actually, that's OK, too.  My other sandals were starting to die.

Boy, this El Nino situation is causing some very very strange weather in California and Nevada.  How is it where you live?Usually where we live and here in Las Vegas it is hot and sunny every single day.  This year the hot and sunny days are interspersed with overcast, humid days.  There have been thunderstorms off and on.  We don't usually get much of those.

Our spring was very mild for a long time and our summer is, so far, not as scorchingly hot.  Hmmm... my spell checker is telling me there is no such word as scorchingly.  It says I should just say scorching.  I like scorchingly so I will leave it.  So there spell checker!  Take that!

My husband and I got home from our vacation last Monday, but there were too many things that needed to be done for me to be able to concentrate on this.  I'm sorry.  I could have done it, but you wouldn't have received a quality product.As I had imagined, there was some partying going on while we were gone.  Our sons do a pretty good job of cleaning things up, but there were some other problems.

The sprinklers were broken and/or turned off.  It was very hot here while we were gone.  We still have some major brown spots on our grass and I've lost some potted plants.I still haven't finished cleaning out the camper and getting it put back together so it is ready for our next vacation.  That's pretty optimistic, don't you think?  Always being ready for a vacation?  I can dream, can't I?

Overall, we had a great vacation!  We stopped at a few National Parks and soaked up the culture and the beauty.We got some interesting weather.  We got some BIG hail one afternoon followed by BIG lighting and BIG rain.  The lightning and rain followed us and reappeared every night for about four nights in a row.

Thank God the hail didn't do any damage to our vehicle.  Also, we thank God we had left the National Park we were visiting.  The road coming out of it was long, narrow, and steep.  That wouldn't have been fun to maneuver in the hail.

My husband got to golf a number of times thanks to his loving wife (that's me!)  I had mapped out directions from campgrounds to golf courses in a number of cities.  Sometimes they were close enough to the campground that he could ride his bike with his golf clubs on his back.  Other times I sat in the camper in the parking lot of the golf course.  I worked on some of the pages for Clarion Call, improved some of the graphics, and just relaxed.

We found a lot of cities were unfriendly towards large vehicles.  Our truck with camper is 25 feet long and our bike rack on the back adds another 18 inches or so to the length.  We drove around and around and around looking for a place to park.  Sometimes we ended up parking in areas that weren't very safe looking.

  Once we parked in a pay lot and hung way out into the lot, but we put money in the meter so we wouldn't get towed.  Another time we parked in a lot that belonged to some kind of organization.  We knocked on the door to ask permission but nobody was there.  We left the truck there and hoped they wouldn't be holding a meeting and have us towed. 

I feel sorry for the people in big, long RV's.  They were worse off than we were.The thing I regret is not staying in any one place longer than overnight.  It is more relaxing for me if I don't have to prepare to travel every day.  We have to pull up all the mini blinds, stow everything in a place where it won't fall or break while we are on the road, slide in our dinette (the side of the camper slides out to give us more floor space--you can see it on this picture), put the jacks up that had stabilized us from rocking, unhook the water and electric, put away the leveling blocks, close all the windows and air vents, blah, blah, blah. 

Some day, when my husband doesn't have to come back to coach football we will be able to have a more flexible schedule.  Some day..... sigh!