Recent photos

Here's what I did this week (while Dale was quite ill with bronchitis). I decided that the new area looked kind of funny and that it needed something to fill in the empty space where I'd planted the perimeter. So I made an iris bed around the sun dial. I'll fill in with some more ground cover (creeping thyme, sedum, creeping jenny).


It's always bugged me that the old drainage hole from the formerly open porch looked so ugly. Dale had filled it with a mangey piece of yellow styrofoam. I got him to cut a piece of wood to fill the hole. Then I glued in this face I found at a garden supply place and added some moss for hair. Cute, huh?

And here's how the new railing looks stained. I still have to do another coat and also the underneath side, but it's so much better than the raw wood.

Record-Setting Saturday

Today Leslie started work at 8:00 AM and didn't finish until about 5:45, taking time off only for lunch. I think that's a record for her. She finished up staining the old garage door, which she also worked on last night after getting in from work. After she finished the garage door, she set her sights on the back porch. She was able to get the interior side stained, and needs now only to stain the outside. The angle of picture I took shows you only the completed side.

Meanwhile I worked on putting up a couple of 2X4's in the new garage, for hanging up yard implements. I screwed in the wood, then nailed in 2 1/2 inch stainless steel nails and hung up as many rakes and brooms and picks, etc., as I had energy for.

The following pictures can be enlarged.

The unfinished yard fabric

Back porch steps

Garage doors

Energy for? I have been sick all week. Over a week ago on Thursday I developed a nagging dry cough that wouldn't go away. By Sunday I was continuously coughing and as a result my throat was on fire. It didn't help that we had company on Sunday--Carroll Rich, my major professor from NTSU, who was passing through on his way to Traverse City, Michigan. On Monday I went to see my allergist for an annual "well-child" checkup, and he diagnosed my problem as acute bronchitis. He prescribed codeine cough medicine and told me to take Mucinex.

Within a couple of days I was feeling well, so I got back outside and pulled probably over 1,000 weeds in the gravel of the backyard, prior to laying down yard fabric [see picture]. Then by Friday I was back into having a relapse. Friday night I slept on the sofa, I was coughing so hard. This morning I got Dr. Straub's answering service, who got hold of him for me. He prescribed an antibiotic this time and I started on it. After lying in bed nearly till noon today, I got up and dressed and went outside to start work on the garage tool-hanging project. I hope I have a better night tonight.

By the way, Leslie had been sick with bronchitis the two weeks before I came down with it. Ever since we returned on June 1, there has been illness in the house.

The three pictures above should give you an idea of the work done the past two days. I also bought 100 2X2X8 bricks and 20 2X4X8 bricks for paving with. I replaced the mismatched bricks around the backyard fountain, and I will use the narrower bricks for edging the new front sidewalk, once I get enough energy and cool morning weather to work in.

Once the remaining bare ground is covered in the back, we will bring in sand and pavers for the "patio" area and sand and crushed gravel for the remainder of the yard. There's still a lot of work to be done, and that doesn't even count the 11 remaining 2nd-floor windows that need to be painted.

Backyard Fountain

I put the backyard fountain in place this morning and filled it with water so that I could see and hear it while pulling weeds from the gravel in the backyard. After all weeds are pulled, we will put down a fabric covering to keep out the weeds, then get a load of gravel and spread it over the covering. This may happen by the end of the week. But for now, get a load of the fountain, which we bought at Jackalope's in Albuquerque. We haven't seen one like it around here. In the first picture above, taken from the front, you can see the slits in the side for the water to go through after coming out above.
In the second picture, you can see the gentle waves on top of the fountain. It has a pump, but it doesn't have much pressure to it. If it did, all the water would spurt out.

We hope you like it, because we do.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Reflections

Having been home for a couple of days, it's time now to reflect on the trip, recording some high points and interesting occurrences and observations.

Memorable:

The wind farms in western Texas and eastern New Mexico, dozens and dozens of giant white windmills with 200-foot wingspans turning slowly in the prevailing winds. In one sense they looked like giant guests at a giant cocktail party, standing around and chatting.

The road signs warning of dangerous crosswinds. We never felt them, so I guess the winds were calmer than usual.

Trucks that pull out right in front of you into the left lane to pass other trucks, at the same time that you want to pull out and pass the trucks, right when the highway begins to ascend. The same trucks finally giving up after a mile or more of trying to pass and pull right back in where they started.

The steady rise in altitude from 981 feet in Joplin to 5280 feet in Albuquerque, to 7040 feet in Santa Fe. The appearance of mountains in the distance once you make it into New Mexico. Mountains all around.

The Historic Route 66 signs along the way, reminders of the heyday of the world's greatest highway. Europeans come to America just to ride Route 66. Fancy that.

The incident at the gas station at Louisiana and San Antonio in Albuquerque. I'm starting to fill our gas tank prior to leaving for Santa Fe on Thursday morning when a car pulls up to the pump on the other side, this young guy gets out and starts up a conversation with me, asking me for a few gallons of gas because no one in this town is willing to help him. He & his son are on their way to Denver and have no money and are out of gas. So I, being a kind-hearted Christian soul, decide to help him. Instead of giving him money, I swipe my card at his pump and tell him I'll buy him a couple of gallons of gas. He asks for 3 or more, and ups it to $15 worth. I watch as he stops the pump at $15.01, then go back to my car on the other side, to finish up. He remains standing there on the other side of the pump, and I begin to feel something's not right. I say, "Where's your son?" He says, "He's in the store." So I decide to wash my windshield, while he continues to stand there on the other side of the pump. When I put up the squeegee, it occurs to me that I should go over on the other side and retrieve the receipt from the pump. When I walk over there, he's standing there, still holding onto the pump handle. He hasn't put it back on the pump. I say, "Put up the handle so I can get my receipt." He does so, I get my receipt, then he shakes hands with me and thanks me, saying "God bless you." I start to walk off, and then turn around and say, "Now, you weren't going to fill your tank after I drove off, were you?" He says, "No, sir, I'm not like that!" I grunt something and go back to the car and drive off, giving the receipt to Leslie. Then for the rest of the trip I worry that somehow he got my credit card number and was going to start charging iPods and TV's and stuff. Of course, it never happened. But I almost inadvertently filled a guy's gas tank, and maybe more besides that. Such behavior ruins Christian charity. He probably drove off to another gas station and gave the same spiel to someone else. He probably lives in Albuquerque. Nevertheless, I did something to help someone, and if he was on his way to Denver, then I did a good thing. But it looked like he was going to take me for a whole lot more. By the way, I never saw the son.

That deed may have spared us a disaster on Saturday. We were driving in the right lane down San Mateo in Albuquerque, on our way to lunch after having shopped at Jackalope's, when this young woman in a dark compact car starts to cut across our lane on her way to make a quick right turn. When I saw what was happening, I accelerated and honked at the same time. She continued, not hearing me, apparently, and I saw in the rear view mirror that she just missed clipping the back fender. We were both prepared for a crunch of metal. Here we were, on our last day in Albuquerque, about to be involved in a car wreck that would delay our leaving for who knows how long? But guess what? She missed us. I could see in the rear view mirror that she was turned to her right talking to someone in the passenger seat the whole time and never noticed how close she came to hitting us. Call it Karma, call it Providence, call it a reward for buying $15 of gas for a scam artist. Whatever it was, we should have been hit but weren't. Thank you, Lord!

Central Avenue in Albuquerque. It's the old Route 66, and there are still motels on the street, with those old Route-66 era neon signs. It was mid-afternoon, but it didn't matter. There were even motel signs where there were no longer motels. And old rehabbed gas stations with the unique architecture. Carolyn told us that Central and the neighborhoods around it aren't nice at night, but in the daytime one can exult in Route 66 memorabilia. We went to a couple of antique stores while on Central.

The Indian pueblos, the Acomas up on a mesa and the Taos Indians on the plain near a rushing creek. Impressive adobe buildings. About 300 people still live on the mesa at Sky City, the Acoma pueblo, where there is no electricity, no running water, and no plumbing. There are, however, propane tanks and generators that are fired up during football season! Oh, and each adobe house has its own porta-potty out back.

The feeling that we white Europeans done the native Americans wrong. I was reminded of the Paul Revere and the Raiders song, "Indian Reservation", which speaks of the loss of the old way and the white culture forced on the Cherokees.

(By the way, just for fun, click on this YouTube video of PR&R singing the first anti-drug song of the 60's. It was 1966, my high school graduation year. Dig those go-go dancers! I was a big Paul Revere and the Raiders fan in the day, a bigger fan than of the Beatles, even.)

However, I also reflected on the vast difference between Aztecan and Mayan cultures and the plains Indians. Also on the advances of the Egyptians and Babylonians and Europeans. What drove those cultures to such heights of scientific and mathematical achievements? And why didn't the the Acomas, the Taos, the Navahos, the Osage, the Apaches, the Comanches, the Shoshones, and so on, make such advances? Was it the landscape? Anyway, as a 1/16th Chippewa, I was grateful to discover some of the culture and history of the two tribes that we visited.

One last thing to say about the native American Indian tribes: casinos. Need I say more? They were everywhere we went, on every highway, every byway.

Crisp high altitude air, low humidity, deep blue skies, no rain, hardly any clouds, and the ever-present hulking mountains rising above the plains. However, something about the climate or air or altitude in New Mexico made my sinuses swell shut. I couldn't breathe for most of the time I was there, until I bought some OTC decongestant tablets at Wal-Mart. Then I got some relief.

I am sure there are more reflections, but I must stop these now and post this entry before it becomes too too long.

The Trip Back Home, 6-1-08

We loaded the car the night of May 31 so that all we would need to load the next day would be limited. I set the alarm on the cell phone for 5:30 AM and we almost literally jumped out of bed and packed and said our goodbyes to Carolyn and backed out of the driveway at 6:00 AM.

The trip was uneventful, with only cloud covering for a small portion of the trip. I expected storms in Oklahoma, but we were pleasantly surprised to see nothing but clear skies with partial clouds all through Oklahoma. The route we took around OKC and through Tulsa cost us $9 each way on the toll roads, but it was worth the money to drive on a bypass around OKC. We made the 760-mile trip in 11 hours and 40 minutes, stopping only for gas and at the McDonald's in Vinita, OK, for a potty break and some ice cream.

Along the way we saw some interesting sites, such as the Cadillac Ranch just west of Amarillo. We didn't stop for it, but it's one of the sites along I-40 that draws tourists. We also passed the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, the place where you can eat a 72 oz. steak for free if you eat it all within an hour.

We also passed, going and coming, the so-called tallest cross in the western hemisphere, located off the interstate in Groom, Texas. Near it, on the other side of the highway, is the Leaning Water Tower. Both of these sites are described in this Wikipedia article on Groom, Texas.

The other interesting features of the landscape along I-40 are the windfarms on both sides of the highway, in eastern New Mexico. You can see pictures of windfarms at this site, to get an idea of how impressive they are. Leslie took some pictures from the car, and they are on the Picasa web site.

We arrived back at home at about 6:40 PM CDT after leaving at 6:00 AM MDT. I never thought we could make nearly 800 miles in one day, without stopping to eat!

All in all, this was the most impressive stateside vacation we have taken, and we owe a lot to the hospitality of Carolyn & Mike Beeler for helping to make this a wonderful trip.

Make sure to visit our Picasa site to view the pictures from the trip. The captions haven't been completed yet, but the pictures say a lot by themselves.