Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

From a lake.

 

 

 

To a wetlands

 

 

 

To a park again.

 

A soggy park, but a park.

 

Manning the pumps 24/7.  2-inch lines.  5 pumps.  They need to be refilled with fuel every hour.  Everybody pitches in.  Getting us down to the point where we’re only draining our 22 acre park, and not the agricultural fields around us as well, was critical.  The pace picked up once we got down to where the water was not flowing in anymore.

 

I walked the perimeter of the park today, on the road inside the park, and my feet only got wet a couple of times.  We’re almost there!  A sprinkle of rain today, but not enough to set us back.

 

 

It’s still early in hurricane season.  If/when the next hurricane comes, we may not want to ride it out.  The bus is parked in storage, put away for the summer and for who knows how long after.  There is no date established for the next bus trip.

 

But we decided maybe we should pack the bus up as a go-bag; our getaway plan.  We should put enough stuff back in it, so that if we get more than a day’s warning, we could pack up and blow town before the storm hit.  We could ride out the next hurricane off in a desert somewhere.

 

We drove over to see how the bus weathered the storm and it looks just fine.

 

It’ll be fun putting some stuff back in it.  We’ve been in one spot so long, even though we’re not going anywhere yet, we’ll enjoy perfecting our disaster plan.

 

 

Plymouth, VW, Volvo, Honda, Chrysler, Dodge, Toyota, Jeep, Mazda.  We liked the Mazda RX7 so much we had two of them.  We like the Jeep so much we’ve had three, and still have one.  There is only one other car we’ve liked so much that we had three of them; the VW Bus.

 

1966,

 

1972,

 

and 1978 versions.  The 1978 one was a pop-up camper van.

 

(None of these are my photos.  They’re just photos I grabbed from the internet, but that’s how each one looked.  Even that charming shade of green!)  None of the engines ever lasted more than 50,000 miles, and we drove that much every two years, but engines could be replaced with rebuilt ones for a few hundred dollars.

 

Now however, there is something new on the horizon.  The electric VW Bus!

 

http://newsroom.vw.com/vehicles/future-cars/official-the-vw-bus-is-back-and-its-electric/

 

Horsepower and traction to spare, and a 300-mile range.  Coming to a dealer and road near you in 2022.  Judy and I may need to get out some spray paint and flower stencils!

 

 

When the kids were little, she had a heck of a time getting them to listen.  I’d come home, she’d tell me what she wanted, I’d tell the kids, and they’d hop to it.  She got what she wanted, but only in a way.  What she really wanted was for the kids to listen to her.  It was all about the Daddy Voice.  She thought it terribly unfair that she had to wait for me to come home and use the Daddy Voice.

 

That was then.  This is now.  Kind of.  She’ll tell Alexa what to do.  Alexa will respond with the same question over and over, about what time Judy wants the reminder, or what the reminder is for.  I’ll suggest Judy try the Daddy Voice.  She’ll make her best impression of a Daddy Voice and it works first try every time!  Some of us in the house think that’s pretty funny, but not all of us do.  Judy accuses me of cracking myself up.  She’s right. And then I get The Look.

 

 

 

With last night’s view.

 

The pumps ran all night.  The water is down enough that we can make out a high-tide line in front of our house.

 

I remember how important the high tide line was when Judy and I went wilderness sea-kayaking a lifetime ago.  There were ten-foot tides in the Pacific Northwest.  We’d land on an island and immediately begin the search for the most recent high tide line; the line of debris left where the water had last reached its highest.  It was important to pitch the tents above the most recent high tide.  There were subtleties to this because there were often two high tides a day, the high high and the low high.  Didn’t want to get fooled pitching tents while paying attention to the wrong high tide line.

 

So, we’ve found the most recent high tide line at Sandpipers.  We’re well above it so we must be okay, but we’re a long way to go until we’re dry.