We had Visitors!!!!

Remember last time I said that we are growing mushrooms in the front yard, Well, here is the proof.

I promised you also pictures from Adventureland the other day and here are a couple. I just could not get in the mood to take a lot of pictures and then I started thinking. Have you ever seen people take a lot of pictures of the place they work? It is a big difference to visit an amusement park to have fun or to work in one. It was an interesting lesson to be learned. :-)


In the meantime we had our first visitors from Retama Village. Donna and Grant send us an email a couple of weeks ago and said that they were coming through Des Moines and if we could meet up. "Sure" I said, happy to get to see a familiar face. Unfortunately they had problems with a blown tire again and instead of getting in a Tuesday and staying a few days, they came in Friday evening, after they also had to pull over on I35 due to a Tornado warning. They had to move on on Saturday and we were working Friday night. Not to fear, we are creative. I did not have to work until 11:20 am Saturday morning and Donna and Grant were kind enough to drive to the casino, which is right next to us, and we met for a 2 hour breakfast. It was so good to get a big hug and a smile. Other than meeting Ute last year on the coast of Oregon, we have never seen our friends on the road other than at the rallies. So everybody, you know where we are, our day off normally is Tuesday and we are always available for breakfasts, since we do work in the afternoon and evening. We sure look forward to anybody who wants to visit us. :-)

As you can tell I am blogging on a Friday afternoon, which means I have two days off this week again. Doug went to work at 2:40 pm and will not be home until after 9 pm. Starting next week the park will be open till 9 pm on weekdays and 10 pm on weekends. We will have to work some long hours, but at least it is starting to pay some bills and that was our goal. Since I am off today I decided to work on some little projects. The cloth on our small awning had come out of the metal rail, so I got our new 6 foot aluminum ladder down from the truck and started investigating. Luckily the material had not ripped and we had just lost a piece of plastic rod that was holding the awning in its groove. I took out the screw that holds the awning in place, called the technician from the place where we bought the rig, confirmed with him that I was correct about the small rod holding the awning in place and just used a bigger metal nail (didn't have anything else thin enough), attached the awning back in its groove and put the screw back on. Next project was a rattle in the light fixture in the kitchen that we have since last summer. Took the cover off, stuck some small felt pieces on the metal plate that was rattling ever time the washer is in the spin cycle and then of course had to do a load of laundry to make sure my fix worked. Come to find out I am actually pretty handy! :-)

It finally stopped raining 1 1/2 days ago and due to us having so many bad thunderstorms, Doug has ordered us a 50 amp surge protector so we don't have to worry about loosing every electrical appliance in the rig in the next storm. By the way, the tornado sirens actually did go of the other day, however, we found out later that in Altoona the sirens will also go of when we have winds in excess of 70 mph (as if that is much better). We took the passports out of the safe and decided to go check out a new grocery store. I just did not feel like staying in the bathrooms with everybody else waiting for the weather to pass. Our neighbors told us later that we did have small hail in the campground. Well, we are not supposed to have a storm again until Saturday evening, so our "lake" might actually disappear for a few hours. Otherwise, we are doing find and Doug's arm has approved a lot by now. I am really proud of him and his dedication to doing his exercises most of the time.