Our Weather Routine

Mona and I have what’s become a weather routine. We hear a distant report of thunder.  Or maybe a flash of lightning streaks a far off sky.  Possibly clouds begin to gather in darker and darker array across the horizon.  Either one of the above signs will bring forth a wondering request of Mona, “Shall we bring in the lawn chairs?” or, “Should we roll in the awnings?” or, as I decide to take a walk about town and she stays in the car to read, “You aren’t taking your umbrella / Fold up parka / hat?” And my response, all too often is something like, “No. It’s just clouds / thunder / distant lightning / whatever.” And the result, 8 times out of 10?  Rain.  Sometimes buckets of it.

So this afternoon, when she asked me to put the lawn chairs away and roll in the awnings I did just that.  And an hour later we had the first rain of any kind we’ve seen since departing Eastern Colorado for Kansas.

Nonetheless, this afternoon’s rain was a relief, if only temporary, from the average 100 plus temps we’ve been having since then.  As Mona just now said to me, “It’s amazing how much more comfortable is 91 than 101.

But this morning we rose to a sunny sky and another day at the beach.  That is, we and all our neighbors. Gary, the park host, had told us the geese began as a couple of couples this spring but laid a few eggs and from goslings to more geese they grew.  

The herons have been here the longest, and the turkey vultures just fly in occasionally though they do seem to like to roost in the trees nearest our RV. Hmmm.

Our neighbors are hardly limited to flying friends.  I found evidence of four footed creatures who visited the campsite last evening outside the coach.  No food stuffs had been left out for them but piles of newly cracked and consumed nuts were here and there everywhere.

  

Fish are really abundant here as well.  They jump for bugs all day long, not just in the morning and evening. Hence the probable reason for at least the herons, who walk the lake shore all day dipping their long necks in snake-like strikes spearing, then swallowing, its meal whole. A couple of wriggles down the neck and they are looking for the next gobble.

Well, the sun is setting and the night creepers are creeping. We just finished supper and I’m enjoying my coffee as Mona, for the first time in many a game, loses Scrabble.  Ah, the simple joys of life are often the best.

Now, we’ll get in a little more reading before bedtime in this very unusually cool 

(85 degree) air.

-Ken