The furry orange bug in Florida

 With some help from trained professionals, we determined this is likely a flightless female of one of several possible species of Oak Moth.  Here is a cool bug on the side of a neighbor’s rig in Wyoming.   I think we’ve got a sawyer beetle. 

That fireworks display

 Was up-close.  We sat on lawn chairs outside our coach.  Front row seats.  The fireworks were big, and they were launched from less than 100 yards away.  Big pyrotechnics.  Chest thumping concussions, full-sky explosions, drifting smoke, and raining bits of exploded cardboard.  It’s a joint effort of the KOA Campground, and the town of Hulett, and the best we’ve seen in a long time. This morning we drove east into South Dakota, then turned left at Belle Fourche (Bell Foosh) for North Dakota.  We’re at Medora Campground right at the south edge of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. 2017 summer trip map A nice sunset over the badlands. But I waited a little late in the evening to take a picture of our camp site. We’re pretty far north now, but this was the hottest day of the trip; low triple digits!  We may need to keep going north.  

Happy Fourth of July everybody

 Independence Day. More walks around the Tower; this time from farther away.     Fireworks right at the campground; right over our heads.    It has been years since we’ve been at a fireworks show. And showing every night on the outdoor screen.Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  This KOA campground has turned out to be a very charming place. 

Wyoming

 While we were at Bill and Marge’s, they told us about the huge hailstorm they’d had a couple weeks earlier.  They have a metal roof on their house, which is now dented.  Between them and their son Don, they had seven windshields destroyed.  Bill showed me craters in the lawn where hailstones the size of softballs had hit. After the storm passed, they collected and saved a few hailstones in the freezer.  That was a hailstorm to remember. 

Our daughter and her family

 From Amsterdam to Munich on a train.  Eight hours at about 100 miles per hour, and Becky did it facing backwards.  (She’s a little woozy.)  They’ve settled in an apartment for a week. Becky and family’s 2017 trip Becky observes that “Driving with no stop signs is confusing.  You apparently "know" who has the right of way.  Unfortunately, not all of us got the memo on who that is, and have to master the apologetic wave.”