Day 137 / 228 Summer Flies By

In our second summer as full-time RV’ers I realize today that these are the manic months. We try to cram 12 months of family time and living and making up for being gone all winter into the 6 months from April to October. We consider ourselves very lucky that we have this great Corps park located centrally to all our family and friends to come and work camp for each summer.

[caption id="attachment_1041" align="alignnone" width="300"] Part of the old group of camping girls[/caption]

This past week was crazy. We both pulled extra duty for the park doing dam gate duty. We had family and friends, who we used to camp with regularly, staying at Saylorville for the week so in between my job, our hours here and spending time with them, we barely slept. The week ended with one of the happy events we have been waiting for. Last night  our close friends daughter was married. The first of two weddings this summer.  It was a beautiful evening for a casual outdoor wedding and reception nearby.  It was one of those events that put us in front of people we havent seen in many years. Usually it's a funeral where that happens. How nice to be at such a joyous event and run into people.  I had to laugh when someone asked if we were doing a lot of camping this summer. We took a few minutes and got them caught up on our life over the past couple of years. This morning we got up with no ambition to do anything or go anywhere.

We did pry ourselves out of the RV and go over to volunteer village to take a look at the condition as the water recedes. The water is going down and leaving all the debris we anticipated behind. The village didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would. Our pad is dry but there is some erosion on the road.

[caption id="attachment_1042" align="alignright" width="300"] Our pad far left. The garden frame in the road with the firewood[/caption]

It was weird to see the frame for my raised garden bed lying in the middle of the road. The zinnia and blanket flower look strange blooming there in the middle of all the brown residue that has replaced the lush green Iowa grass.  The water is back in the timber again and the lake continues to go down. I imagine sometime in the next couple of weeks if the rainfall continues to moderate they will restore the power and we can do the cleanup and get moved back over there around the first week of August. In the mean time we are enjoying our temporary spot in the shade. We pull out weekly to dump the tanks and fill with fresh water. I am getting practice driving the motor home in tight places and backing it back into the site.

It hit me this morning that our time in Iowa is half over for the season. I’m not sure how I feel about that today.

Until tomorrow...