June 15, 16 & 17- Boring Day and A Scary Night

Bill with Ranger Patty

June 15 – Kinda boring day. When we were slowly getting ready for going back to work, Bill said how fast the 3 days off goes. It sure does. I was out at the Entrance Station til 12:30 then in the VC the rest of the day. Bill’s shirt and hat I ordered for him with the arrow National Park Service design on them came today. They look good. He’s wanted that design on something for ages and they don’t sell it at any of the parks, but it can be ordered on line.

For dinner I made ham with pineapple, fresh green beans, butternut squash and homemade cornbread. I sure wish I had bought more of that Mingus Mill cornmeal in NC. That is the best cornbread. Maybe it will work with coarse grain cornmeal as long as I use the same recipe. We walked Xena but were both tired so didn’t ride tonight. Bill did the dishes while I sat out under the awning and read a while, then I did my ironing and showered. Just sized the photos still on the camera in case I’m in the Entrance Station in the morning I will get them uploaded.

Time to read a bit more of Harry Potter.

Bill with Ranger Patty

June 16 -  Oh what a night!  I went to bed just after 11 and Bill woke me in about an hour and said it was windy out and did I put the awning in.   So I got up and it was blowing pretty hard out so I put the awning and it was sounding bad so I looked out at our stuff and my tomato plant was about to tip over so Bill went out and moved it to between our steps and slideout.  Then it started raining and he hurried in.  Then the rain started pounding and blowing and it was forever before I fell asleep but it was so loud out I lay there wondering if it would get worse and what to grab to get out if we needed to.  I’d take our money envelope, my purse and grab a towel to wrap Molly in.  I know Bill would get Xena and his wallet so we’d be good.  At some point I passed out and shortly it was 7:15.  I was kinda nervous to look outside and see our dish down and our stuff all over, but Bill had been out and said some things had blown into the bushes but mostly everything was wet and that included the pets backseat bedstuff for the truck.   Then Bill said there was no water.  Uh oh!  I told him there would be 10 gallons in the water heater so he could get a shower.  He went to the site next to us to see if they had water so we’d know what to tell maintenance.  The water there was working so I tried ours again and it was fine.  We figured our other neighbor who goes to work in maintenance at 7 reported it and got it fixed.  Anyway, Bill was really happy he could take a shower and that things weren’t as bad as we had thought.
 
I worked the entrance station for the morning. I took the laptop and got caught up on email and posted 2 days of blog, so I made some headway. The afternoon was pretty fast in the Visitor Center. I hardly got to read any of my book.

We had leftovers for dinner so I could go to Weight Watchers. After the meeting Kerry called from NH and we caught up a bit. Then I stopped at Krogers for a few things. Bill had the dishes done and had put the clothes in the dryer. We watched some NCIS.


June 17 – Another work day. We were both in the VC all day. The guy, Eric, who left his RV here when he had to go back to Florida for surgery, came back and was at the VC all day with us. He’s a bit strange. He came in his Confederate uniform and didn’t leave the VC to go for lunch, brought it with him. The word is everyone thinks he’s odd.

There’s a swamp fire at the Oconluftee and it’s created a bad haze everywhere. We walked Xena and were going to ride to the bridge and take photos of the sunset but it was too hazy so we did about 3.5 miles along the river and around the fort. Then it was TV and reading time.